On Raposcallion, my baby/cargo carrier, I keep changing bars as I experiment with finding a sweet spot between the moon bar upright riding position and the pitched-forward fixed-gear position when the kid seat is removed. I tried shorty arc bars I had cut down for Wrongbike at one point, and the latest is Sparrow knock-offs twisted up sort of like risers. I’m finding a bar position that will be fun when the kid seat is gone, but also allow me more of a conventional riding position even when Zoe (or Matteo, eventually) is on there. So, anyway, an aside to all that: I keep pulling grips off. Kind of wasteful when you don’t have an air compressor around to blast the grip off from within. This is the only bike I have that uses actual grips, the others all being tape-wrapped.

So, I got it in my head to look for grips that were removable. Beyond the usual shop methods, of course. And so I eventually found my way to these: Speed Metal by Portland Design Group. They aren’t the only grips out there using compression bolts to hold into place, but they would match the eventual look of this bike aesthetically, so why not.

It’s a pretty cool system. The inner ring is actually the outermost layer, contoured for your thumb, and the outer tube, the grip itself, slides up under it.

Each end point is secured with a tiny allen (of different sizes, interestingly) and overall it feels quite secure. In my case it’s only half-successful because the grips are too long for the curve point of the bar. So the outermost edge and that clamp ring are really just hanging out. But I secured them with plugs I fashioned and we’ll see how it works out. I tried putting blinkies on the ends but it looked kind of awkward. I may return to that anyway, just because I like having an outboard blinker when kids are on-board.

Pretty cool product!

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