You could also try electrical gripper tape. Is a rubber tape that sticks to itself no adheasive backing. The big warehouse home improvement stores carry it. Its made by 3M. The tighter you wrap it the better it holds. I use it to finish my bar tape and works great.

So I tried the heat shrink tubing for hoods on my sram red shifters. It's on there now- I'm hoping I've learned a bit and the next ones will be better- I have to get some pics up, but I did mine mounted to the bars- otherwise I'd be cutting a hole in each of the hoods in order to tighten them down to the bars. I had a couple of creases which are workable, but not the prettiest thing. Weight-wise they're ok- I don't know if I was using thicker tubing but they started out at 23g each (unshrunk) and after heating and cutting excess they came in at 14g and 15g. The btp hoods weighed about 26g, but these should last a lot longer and they're much, much, much cheaper.
Another issue I found is wrapping the bar tape, I probably need to leave a bit more tubing on the edges so I can get the tape under there- even better might be to wrap the bar first and then shrink the hoods on there.

The lightest alternative seems to be self-sticking silicone tape (hoods and bar)- since I experimented w/ it a bit, when I took off the last incarnation it weighed about 29g for one side of the bar, but remember that's covering the hood as well. Issue here is it's being wrapped on the shifter and the silicone tape starts to come undone- in my case, after about 3 weeks. It's also ugly, really ugly.

The shrink tubing is a lot neater- in the end I'm not sure if it's worth the effort- I'll have to see how long they hold up and how the next attempt comes out.


At least I didn't melt my powercordz w/ the heat gun!!!

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Speedplay is the devil.

Here are my bars. I use benoto tape a heat shrink. Dont really cover the entire lever just enough to cover where cable comes out and the bolt hole that holds them to the bar. I used 6 grams of heatshrink total to do this and that was before I heated it up.

Since the silicone tape is so thin (and I like it), I really could go to the benoto tape- my hoods are completely covered- sram shifters tighten from the top of the shifter- if I didn't cover the entire thing there'd be holes.

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Speedplay is the devil.

these are my sram levers. I think you might be using a different kind of shrink than I use. Mine never wrinkles and is definitely lighter.
I use
Ultra Thin Wall
2 to 1 Ratio
Flexible Polyolefin

Seems like a good solution for the shifters on a CX bike but curious if you have to repalce the heat shrink tubing each time you replace cables or is the material flexible enough that it is not an issue?

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Michael - The Anaerobic Threshold is neither...

You dont have to replace it but I do. I have probably 40 feet of it sitting in the garage it is super cheap. I could probably make 50 sets of hoods for the cost of 1 set of oem hoods.

Where do you get it? I can't find it in any of my local hardware stores and looking online it's not that cheap, I'm probably not looking in the right place though!

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Speedplay is the devil.

Not sure if this is the same thing but I have purchased it locally from Altex Computer and it appears you may also be able to order the 2" Diameter FP-301 Heat Shrink Tubing online in several colors.

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Michael - The Anaerobic Threshold is neither...

This is the stuff. You need to use a heat gun to do it correctly .
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=080-702

thanks- one other question- how do you get your sram shifters tightened down on the handlebar? Do you put a hole in the tubing to get to the bolt?

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Speedplay is the devil.

I would normally mount the levers on the bars first. Just did this one to demonstrate how it looked. I don't actually run Sram Levers on any of my bikes.

I did a 52 mile ride today w/ the hoods- the imperfections from my 1st attempt didnt' bother me at all. They're quite nice- I think this is the way to go (for me anyway).

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Speedplay is the devil.

just to follow up-- I found the 2 in diameter tubing is not practical w/ sram hoods mounted on the bars. It may fit nicely when not attached to anything, but that makes it impossible to mount them on the bars because the bolt will be covered by the tubing. You can get the 2in stuff on w/ the levers mounted, but it gets messy with the shape of the bars- I tried it and it came out rather horribly. I went back to 3 in tubing which slides on the shifters much easier and has enough room to shrink down nicely- just because of its size there will be one or two areas that wrinkle, but I've got it down now where those are excess parts that end up getting cut off w/ a blade.

It's not perfect, but then again, take a look at btp hoods after about 2 weeks of use- they start ripping, getting holes, losing their color (even black) and this stuff feels good as well at about the same weight- not to mention it's much cheaper. I'll try to get some pics up.

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Speedplay is the devil.

for those that have aligator ilinks or any other fragmented housing you could use clear heat shrink to cover the beads. i used it on my aztec power cables that are on my look 595 i will post a pic later.