Ergon Grip Disaster Fixed

Finally a sunny Saturday in Syracuse! Riding to just enjoy the sun and early Spring, I poked around the city taking photos. I'll post some in my next post.

While stopping to talk to some fishermen who had caught a 40 pound carp (where's the photo of that? duh... no photo... ), I parked my Brompton. Then it fell over. One of the fisherman was kind enough to point out that I had lost a piece. Sigh...

When my Brompton fell over, it hit on the bar end of the left hand grip. This cracked the plastic ring on end of the grip on which fastens the bar end of the Ergon grip. On the Ergon grips the bar end tightens down on the plastic ring on the grip and holds the whole assembly in place. This crack meant that the grip needed to be replaced.

Actually, I had been considering removing the Biocork grips to shorten them slightly. When I had installed the grips, I had used the full length. This moved the brake levers and shifters in toward the center of the handelbar. Everything worked, and I was happy. A few months later I shifted the handlebars a little farther away from the saddle. this meant that the brake cable pressed more firmly against the front fork. Because of where I had moved the brake lever, where the cable exits the lever was very close to the fork, causing the cable to kink more than I liked. Since the grips were longer than I needed, I thought I would cut about 3/4 of an inch (2 cm) from the grip to move the brake levers out farther and avoid the kink. So... this ended up being a good time. And I had a second pair of Ergon grips in my basement. I'd been meaning to put them on the S2E-X, but hadn't gotten to it.

These grips are the GP2 grips. The bar end is a little shorter than the GP3 Biocork bar end. The grips are the same length, only made of black rubber/plastic material instead of the Biocork. Here you can see where I cut the 2 cm from the end of the bar. After shortening the grip, I used a two grades of sandpaper to smooth the ends and round over the edge just a little before installing them.

Everything reinstalled and shifted slightly to the outside. I reinstalled the longer bar ends from the GP3 and tucked the shorter GP2 bar ends away, just in case. One of my common hand positions is to reach out farther and hold just the bar ends.

On another note, you can see where I have installed the Brompton cross bar on the M handlebars. This gives me a place to mount the bright CREE XML headlight when I'm cycling at night.

There's a lesson here. Park the bike more carefully or lean it against something more stable! I hate to hear my Brompton fall!