I'm not sure of the age or year to which you are trying to restore your Ort, but I have a couple of bikes that date somewhere around 1940. The one with upright bars has push-on grips that have a really nice stitched leather covering. the other has drop bars, but also use push-on style grips, with the rest of the bar left bare. The grips on that bike are a thick, hard rubber and are cigar-shaped, without finger grip ridges. It is my understanding that both are original to the bikes. Grips lead a hard life, and often start to spin with age, or get broken on the end. Sometimes they get so loose they just fall off. Bare-end handlebars can be quite dangerous, so original grips are often the first parts to get changed out (after tires, tubes, brakeshoes and chains, of course.) Pedals are another part that often lets go early on older bikes.
Steve Barner, who climbed into the attic to check one of those bikes, in Bolton, Vermont. I need a bigger house for these bikes.
> Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 15:38:26 EST
> From: Crankyrigger@cs.com
> To: Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Subject: [CR]Introduction
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> Several months ago I inherited a number of classics from an old friend. By
> far the nicest is an Ohrt ladies town bike with 650B wheels. It appears to
be
> almost entirely original. The one glaring exception is a pair of godawful
red
> Hunt-Wilde grips.
> The bike is red with chrome fork ends and stays, green and white box
> pinstriping. It has LeFol Balafon fenders with matching red and green
> stripes. The crank is Stronglight with the Touriste chainrings. The rear
> derailleur is a Simplex Tour de France (I think) with a four speed
freewheel.
> It has matching racks with JOS lights and a Radios generator. The
handlebars
> are moustache type with Mafac levers. Cables are internally routed to some
> very low profile steel cantilevers. The tires are matching red Dunlops.
All
> in all it is a very nice old bike, but I would welcome any advice about a
> proper handlebar treatment to replace the grips. The story that goes with
> this bike is that Ohrt kept it in the shop for years because Katherine
> Hepburn rode it when she visited San Francisco. I can't prove that, but my
> friend eventually wore him down and purchased the bike some time before
1959.