Anybody using SQ-Labs grips/innerbarend?
 

I've been looking to modify the hand positions on my commuter bike to use it for a tour. It is an old Trek 7000 with a flat bar and it was great for commuting but I worry about using it for longer rides that way. I currently have some grips on it but I was also looking for a more road bike position, without changing to road bars.

So has anybody used these? I'm looking at the 710 grip and the 410 inner bar end, that mounts inside the grip, not at the end. They look good on the screen but user reviews are always better. They aren't cheap for what they are either. It'll cost $95 on Amazon to get the full set. That seems steep. One attraction is being able to reach the brakes from either position, like riding on the hoods on a road bike. I really hesitate though to convert this bike to a road bar because of the shifters and levers, that'll cost a lot more than this. My planned usage is on a 500 mile cross NY state tour, a medium distance. I doubt I'd ever do another tour but maybe I'll get hooked. I'm 67 and not looking to invest much in bike equipment anymore, believe me I have plenty. N+1 is not in the cards, since N=4 already, 5 if you count the bike my son absconded with (with permission, he moved to Seattle where the bike was built in 1981 by Bill Davidson. It is my visitor's bike!) My road bikes are not suitable at all for touring.

SQ Lab 710 grips If you scroll you'll see the 410 inner bar end and how it attaches too. The pic below is the RIGHT grip and you see how the bar end is on the INSIDE.


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Those look really comfy.

I replaced the grips on my mountain bike with these:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1. They're way more comfortable than my stock grips. I've taken advantage of multiple hand positions with these grips especially on high mileage gravel rides.

I'd think you'd appreciate those grips you're asking about. They're way nicer than the grips I bought and you'll appreciate the multiple hand positions. I understand your hesitancy. I'm not into riding with my hands in close. Hopefully someone with chime in who's used them.

Found these on a websearch. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003688287947.html

I have SQlab handlebars + inner bar ends and Ergon grips. Very very happy. Feels like riding on the hoods (when hands rest on the inner bar ends) vs typical feel of a MTB when resting on the grips. Both positions are comfortable. I use rapid fire shifters. Shifters and brake levers can be reached without moving your hands, in either position.

Thanks for confirming. They looked good to me too and my main hesitation was the price. Maybe they are worth it then.

I do most of my long rides on the hoods of my road bike and the few times I’ve taken the commuter on 40-50 mile rides my hands would hurt, plus I have ulnar nerve pain in one hand that I believe is from years of riding. One thing I’ll transfer from my road bike is the Redshift Shockstop stem. That’ll give some shock absorption to the setup too.

Another thing I’ve decided on is a Brooks saddle. Also pricy but probably worth it.

I went ahead and bought them, along with a stem adapter from threaded to threadless for the ShockStop stem. It came to 91EUR but I also had an $83 longstanding credit on Paypal that I applied so the net cost to me was $21. I didn't order through Amazon so I had to pay shipping but all told not a bad deal. The last items I ordered from Germany came in 3 days when they said it would take 3 weeks.

I'm doing the 5 Boro Bike Tour here in NYC in a few weeks. It's a 42 mile ride but it'll be a good test as I'll be riding with slower riders and it'll feel more like 100. But I guess a touring pace is slower anyway so maybe it will be more like what I'll be doing.

I've got a new bike on order (c'mon, container vessel!) and since I'm not riding it yet, I'm planning out what accessories I might want when it gets here. (Kind of like daydreaming about the perfect treehouse when I was a kid.) I hadn't known that inner bar ends (bar middles?) were things before today, and now I know I want them. Thanks, @zacster!

one thing to keep in mind is the bar width on your new bike, and where the "bar middles" will be placed. Ive ridden with bar ends for decades, and recently I switched bars on one of my bikes to wide mtb bars, and I find the bar ends are "sticking out in the wind" a fair amount now (compared to narrower bars)
Not a big deal as its my commuter, so not riding for long periods of time.
I just wonder if these bar middles could feel a bit too inward for ones liking, but Im just throwing out ideas here, having never used these new jobs before.
kinda neat idea though.
I do still like traditional bar ends for climbing and whatnot, as well of course for the changeup in wrist postion--super important for me comfort wise.

I didn't know they existed either until I started searching around for alternatives to putting drop bars on the bike, something I didn't want to do. I think they cleared customs today and should be here by Friday. They aren't readily available in the US because the company is restructuring their operations in North America so I had to order from Germany. Seemed silly to order small parts like this from overseas but I found what I found.

I did measure where they would end up being positioned and they will be about 1" closer together than my road bike hoods/levers are. I think that'll be fine. And if not there is still some wiggle room or I could get a wider flat bar.

I'll report back with pics and impressions.

I call them bar inners.

They came today and I installed them and took a quick ride. The grips have a really nice feel to them and fit my hands nicely. The bar inners gave me the position I use on my road bike. I measured and they are within a half inch of the spacing of the road hoods and the reach is also nearly the same. I was able to brake with my hands on the inners easily and my guess is hydraulic discs would be even easier. I'm using XT v-brakes with Deore long pull levers. They are a light touch but I'm sure could be lighter still. I also need to tighten the cables so it requires less pull. Using the Deore trigger shifters was easy on the inners in one direction, to higher gears, but needed to move my hands to go the other way. With my hands on the grips instead the inners do not get in the way of either braking or shifting. Overall I'm pretty happy with them, but it was only an hour or so on the bike. My panniers arrive tomorrow Thursday and I'm going to put those on with a light load and do a longer ride on Friday when the weather will be nice. I also have the fatter tires to try, maybe I'll do those next week. I don't want to make too many changes at once.

I was wondering if you could include a picture of your bars? I've been thinking about getting some inner bar ends after learning about them from your post.

I did the 40 mile ride yesterday with them and also my new panniers pretty much fully loaded. It really helps to have a separate hand position that can still reach the brakes. I would say though they should be a little longer than they are to make it feel even more like a road brifter hood. I did change the positioning some of the grips, shifters and levers after the ride and you are seeing that result. The grips were angled too high and the shifters were too low and I had to wrap my thumb to shift front chainrings. I also angled the levers a little lower. It's funny, but I hardly ever used the front shifter before because I was always comfortable on the big ring no matter what. The load made it a lot harder going up.

The bar inners are 14.5" center to center at the bar. By comparison my road bike is 15.25" so it is a little narrower but not too much. On the ride yesterday I had to remember to use them as I'm just not used to it, but once I had my hands in them they'd stay there for a while. I was on the West Side Greenway in Manhattan, probably the most used MUP in the country so there was always a reason to brake between the bike traffic, the pedestrians crossing and the cross car traffic in a few spots. It is also not coincidentally the end of my planned ride of the Empire State Trail which will start in Buffalo.




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Thanks Zacster! That helps a lot. I've been doing more gravel rides with my mountainbike and find my wrists are uncomfortable after an hour or two. Those looks like they'd be a great solution!

I bought them through Bike24 in Germany. Nobody in the states has them. They took about 10 days to arrive due to customs and the USPS after they shipped them same day as the order.

I just got the 402 + 710 combo. They feel really nice and the innerbarends feels like using hoods, with easy access to brakes. From past experience I knew I needed another hand position for long rides. Have not had a chance to test these on a long ride yet, but so far they feel and look great.

How’s your experience with the Redshift stem? Is it worth the price and how long have you had it? Has it continue to perform well?

The Redshift stem is great. It really absorbs the shock without feeling spongy or springy. I've had it on my road bike for 2 years now and would have bought one for this bike too but I was no longer commuting with it and would only occasionally use it. But for a 1-2 week tour I figure it is worth transferring it over. I bought a converter stem from threaded to threadless and I still have the old road stem that I replaced with the Redshift. I need to undo the bars that I have so nicely set up in the photos to swap it out, but that'll be one time only and from there I can swap stems easily if I want.

Thanks. I just bought it and installed it. Haven’t gone on a long ride yet and it doesn’t seem to move much but a quick ride around the block and I’m already feeling like there’s less vibrations.

That's why I like it. It isn't an obvious shock absorption and it doesn't just bounce up and down. It takes the sting out without making the road disappear. Ride over some rough patches of road or gravel and you'll see the benefit.

I've been out on this bike a lot more now and the bar inners have become second nature and my preferred position. I can brake and shift to the smaller cog on the right or the smaller ring on the left with the flick of a finger in the inner position. I need to move my hand to shift the other way though, but I was expecting that. It isn't nearly as hard as using bar end shifters, something I just never understood.

And the rest of the grip is really good too. It has a nice platform for you hand. But it was telling that after 10+ years of riding this bike with only the flat bar I settled into the inner position and having my hands wide on the bar felt less comfortable.

I bought a cheaper version of the inner bar end from AliExpress, just to try them out. I don't have straight bars, though, I have really swept bars (60 degrees swept). I emailed SQ labs at one stage and they recommended that the inner bar ends not go on any bar with more backsweep than 30 degrees, but I have to say I quite like the AliExpress version. They're not an exact copy of the SQ product, although they may be a copy of some other product, but they look very similar.

I may have bought the same one. The coolest thing about it is it's hinged so I didn't have to pull everything off my bar to put them on. For the price, it was worth giving it a try.

Yeah, I have the hinged ones. I had been using the thumb hooks from Aliexpress, which are also sort of decent, but they don't have the degree or ergonomic shaping that the hinged ones do; they were much more basic, shaped like a shark's fin and branded as such.

It's been over a year since I bought these and they've changed the way I ride that bike completely. I almost never use the grips anymore, just the bar inners. It just became second nature. As for that 500 mile Empire State Trail trip, it never happened. I tore my meniscus in June last year, and needed surgery which I had at the end of August after a painful summer. Unfortunately that knee problem took all the wind out of my cycling even though I'm fine now with it, but I then had a rotator cuff tear to keep me off even more. I got on the bike yesterday and it felt OK, but then my shoulder hurt afterwards. I'll keep trying though, I don't want this to be the end of cycling for me. I'm 68 and even just a couple of years ago thought I could go on forever with it.

What I did with my flat bar bike was shorten the bars before fitting bar ends and wrapping them in bar tape.
When you think about it when drop bars are 40-46cm wide why do flat bars for using on road need to be 700 wide?