Do you helitape your bike?

Didn’t know people did this, except for rub spots

Apart from Ibis riders.

Tube on chainstay, that’ll do me.

I do on bikes I use for bikepacking, the bags can rub quite badly. For normal mountain biking I wouldn’t bother. I have an old tyre tiewrapped to the downtube of my downhill bike.

Raw frame so nothing to rub/chip and as such, no, no tape anywhere.

Invisiframe. It’s basically invisible unless you now where to look, and there are very very few places that aren’t covered. The frame should look like new if I ever sell it.

WTF? No, stuff gets scratched, deal with it.

1) I guess you never try sell stuff used
2) a mate has a Trance that has never had any tape on it. The cables have rubbed grooves in the headtube a couple mm deep, there can be barely any tube left. Looks horrendous and I’d be wary about riding it let alone buying it.

Given the typical price for a decent frame why would you not spend a fiver protecting it?

Cable/hose and heel rub areas taped on my bikes.

Didn’t, then went through basically full wrap period, now almost given up.

The full wrap bikes started looking crap with dirty tape edges giving hard lines of dark.

What I’m doing now is either cut up inner tube or amalgamating tape on chainstays, heli tape on fork lowers (not on everything) and a rock strike strip under bb/bottom tube plus little rub patches. Like some others have said, ice concluded I don’t mind my bikes looking like they have fun. Clean is good, that’s just basic maintenance but showroom finish is not very important to me.

I think I’d probably tape a few grands worth of shiney new FS though.

All this is purely personal taste! 🙂

carbon rear triangle helitaped and so glad I did. Front alu is anodised and amazingly scratch-proof.

My stretchy matte helitape is peeling and air bubbles appearing 👿 …it seems ok yesterday when i apply it.

I have to clean all the mud off it first & that’s never going to happen…

I like the battle scarred look. Reminds me of all the fun we’ve had. While I appreciate others want max return to invest in the new bike when they sell it reminds me of those people who cover new futniture in clear plastic 🙂

I’d like to see some evidence that extensive taping really improves the resale price. Any mountain bike that’s been ridden properly will pick up the odd scratch whether it is taped or not. A bit of tape on the places where a cable could rub right through the frame and something for rock strikes and chain slap sounds fine to me.

@Roverpig

Some evidence for you where a bike has been ridden properly and not picked up the odd scratch. This is my 2014 Banshee Rune that has been ridden 3-5 times a week since November in mainly horrendous weather and a 10 day trip to Malaga over New Year, using DH shuttling with rocks and shingle flying up everywhere.

Invisiframe is as much of a game changer as a the reverb or if we go back 13 years what V Brakes weere when they replaced canti’s.

Lee from Invisi learned his trade over 15 years wrapping high end sports cars and now has turned his hand to looking after bikes. No mud behind the edges, highly resistant to tearing, comes in gloss or matte and can be polished up. Also, when washing the bike mud just slips off instead of getting into the paint.

Surely this will bring me more revenue at resale and keep the bike safe so cables are not grinding into tubes?

Give my mate Lee a shout on your next bike purchase and if it doesn’t work for you then you give me a shout and I’ll personally give you the money back that you payed for it. You cant say fairer than that hey?

http://www.invisiframe.co.uk

Picking up frame from invisi:

Bike Park Wales:

Malaga DH week:

Last week hours after a mud fest:

The kit works,

All the best.

I’ve invested in an Invisiframe kit for my Rune and am glad that I have – all of the cable rub areas are protected by big, almost invisible pieces so look better than little squares of helitape. The rear end has a fair few nicks in it now and I’d rather that than the finish.

I don’t mind scratches and scuffs, but if I can keep my frame looking nicer for longer why not? The Invisiframe kit seems to last better than helitape too – my forks were helitaped by the previous owner but its discoloursed and is starting to get dirt under the edges.

At the very minimum, I’ll tape up the rub spots.

I stick it anywhere that gets heel rub, cable rub or is likely to bounce of things such as fork legs and the BB area. And the crank arms ‘cos I like them to stay black.

So what tape do people use?

Building up my first bike a c456 matte – prob a silly question, but i presume it still suffers from cable rub 😳