Why?
On long rides, usually when bikepacking, I find myself wanting more hand position on my mountain bike bars. I didn’t want to swap to an ‘alt bar’ as I still wanted a normal MTB style bar for trail riding. I considered clip on aero bars, but didn’t really want aero bars and they can get quite expensive. I’d narrowed things down to two options: a Ridefarr Alloy Aero Bolt On and the SQ Labs innerbarends. I decided on the SQ Labs innerbarends mostly just because I thought I’d be able to have more choice over where on the bar they went, and the Ridefarr Aero Bolt On seemed to have quite a narrow hand position – which limited its usefulness.
First Impressions
I ordered the 410 2.0 model – the 411 2.0 version seemed skinnier and not as comfy and there was no way I was getting the carbon version at well over £100.
The shape of the bar ends seems really nice, and very comfortable, much more so than using normal short bar ends in the same way, inboard of the grips.
They are helpfully labelled left & right – initially I was holding them them in the wrong hands.
Installation
I didn’t expect to struggle to install these – but wow. I’ve fitted various things to handlebars before and have never struggled as much as I did with these innerbarends.
I’d already accepted that I would have to take everything else off my bars to get these on, which is annoying but not the end of the world. But once I did that I discovered that the bar ends wouldn’t slide onto the bars without some convincing.
I had to pry open the clamp to open it enough to slide onto the bars, having taken the bolt out – which wasn’t a good sign. I got one roughly in place and proceeded to put everything on that side of the bar back on. Then put the bolt back into the bar end to tighten it and found that the bolt didn’t meet the threads of the insert in the clamp – with a little encouragement I manage to get the threads to meet and began to tighten, only to have things to mushy and not tighten. The small amount the bolt and insert were able to thread together wasn’t enough to hold it together and the threads stripped before reaching anywhere near the proper torque.
At this point I’d got both bar ends sitting on the bars with one bolt and insert stripped and neither bar end clamped on. I don’t know why I was having such an issue. I have a normal MTB bar, onto which these bar ends are designed to fit. I don’t know if the tolerance is too tight or what, but the bolts just seemed 2-3mm too short.
Pretty frustrated by this point I considered ripping them off and sending them back, but I’d ordered them because I wanted to have different hand positions available and sending them back wouldn’t make that happen.
Luckily I found a couple of bolts that matched the thread pitch, diameter and head size. So I cut them down to be 2-3mm longer than the original bolts, threaded them into to the damaged insert from the back to restore the threads as best I could and used my cut down bolts to clamp the bar ends down.
It appears to be a combination of two issues – the clamp diameter being too small and the bolt being too short. How I seem to have had an issue when I’ve not found any other report of it I’m not sure.
In use
After the faff with actually getting these on the bike I was hoping that they were worth the effort.
I’ve now been on a few rides with these since writing the rest of this blog post and so far I think they’ve been worth it.
I think I’m yet to find the perfect angle for me, but it’s definitely nice have an alternative hand position.
Because they are individual pieces you can position them anywhere on the bars, as long as they fit – which means you can actually steer when using them, if they are far enough out.
I recently found an unexpected benefit of the bar ends – they saved my Garmin from getting smashed in a recent crash, acting like its own personal roll cage.
I don’t know how they compare to any other options, but having them is nicer than not having them – despite the difficulty of fitting them.