Why did bar ends disappear?

Johnsqual":3489zvhf said:

Hey,

Looking at older racing photos, you see people of the generation of Rik Van Looy up to Tom Simpson riding bikes with bar end shifters, but by the 1970s they seem to have died out (except for cyclcocross).
Why is this? Were bar ends somehow inferior to downtube shifters, or was it just a fashion thing?

Johnny

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David B":31uftaoa said:

Johnsqual":31uftaoa said:

Hey,

Looking at older racing photos, you see people of the generation of Rik Van Looy up to Tom Simpson riding bikes with bar end shifters, but by the 1970s they seem to have died out (except for cyclcocross).
Why is this? Were bar ends somehow inferior to downtube shifters, or was it just a fashion thing?

Johnny

Click to expand...

Bar-ends kept going for much longer than that on touring bikes (as I well remember from the Dawes brochures of my teens!) - they still pop up now & again but have lost a lot of ground to STI and Ergopower levers.

David

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Johnsqual":3buif62q said:

One of the odd results of the use of barends for TT bikes is that they now seem to have become elite kit.

It looks like Shimano used to do 105 barends, but now they only have Dura Ace ones - at Dura Ace prices Same goes for SRAM, it appears.

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