Monday night and again today I had a weird experience. Obviously very cold (-3 or so) but I was out for my XC laps in Edinburgh.
Both times: got to the top of the hill on first lap and depressed my (Brand X cable actuated wiggle special) dropper to go down. When I got to the bottom, it was like the lever was “stuck” being pushed. Sit on it it goes down, stand up it goes up. There was loads of free play in the lever and I tried footling around with it but no joy, was like it was jammed in the “on” position at the bottom of the post.
Really annoying and had to abandon. By the time I had got the bike back inside and was fiddling with the lever it fixed itself. Same story today. Took it out the frame and everything seemed fine…weird.
It is routed fine with no sharp angles or kinks and has been since September when I last changed the cable. Always worked flawlessly, cable didn’t get snagged. Only got the dropper in May or something.
today I also noticed that my fork (Reba RLT) was also super stiff until I bounced around on it a few times.
It’s cold but not exactly Arctic…could this be temperature related?! Or is it likely I need a new outer cable for some reason.
Yep, like gears- the parts should all be really resistant to freezing, though slowing down is pretty common as oil thickens. But get a little water in anywhere and you can get freezing (and it's a bit unintuitive because it only takes a small freeze to knacker it, and small amounts of water freeze easier than larger ones so a little bit is worse than a lot)
Dropper posts across the board tend to come with crap cables anyway, even expensive ones, so it's often worth an upgrade to a decent cable anyway. But just pulling the inner and lubing it might be enough. There's obviously a chance it might be water in the post but that's way less likely.
My mate was saying I should piss on it but unfortunately I couldn’t have squeezed out a drop of I wanted to…definitely had an innie at that point!
Thanks, I guess that makes a lot of sense actually. Little drops of water on my bottle were freezing in minutes between sips.
The lever end of the cable lost its crimp and is frayed enough to stab me loads of times so I will be changing it anyway. That’s just expedited the process up my to do list.
Yep, happened to me on Monday in -4, changed the inner cable and all is well now… Easy fix!
I've had this happen, new cable + outer fixed it.
I did have to finish the ride with a saddle that wouldn't stay up
I've had the grease in a Shimano freehub freeze on me once (back in 2010/2011, when we had that prolonged cold spell of around -10).
I had to zip tie the splines of the cassette to my spokes to get home, it was no fun.
The original raceface and Easton posts (6or7yrs ago?) didn't work below freezing at all, a Nd would randomly activate iirc.
Freezing in place isn't so bad. But the cheap one I've got on my transmitter when it freezes slides gently down when you sit on the saddle which is highly annoying but livewithable. Unfortunately when you take your arse off the saddle going down a steep rough bit (no comments on technique please) it fairly rapidly pops back up again looking to nudge you over the bars when you try to sit...
(But last night's ride on my occam was absolutely fine in that I can't really blame the bike for all my falling off.)
I’ve had the grease in a Shimano freehub freeze on me once (back in 2010/2011, when we had that prolonged cold spell of around -10).
Yip, I've had that too, quite possibly in the same cold snap.
I pissed on it and it did the trick though 😀
I've had the same problem in Edinburgh with the same post. It's largely been solved since I swapped to brake outer cable with a gear inner - there's loads more room for the cable so it runs more freely in the cold.
@binners why didn't I think of that 😀 ! Although I'd rather have a frozen freehub than a frozen old chap...
Interesting idea - although I'm not sure it would work for me super well. The cable port on the seat tube for internally routing the thing is only barely big enough for a gear cable. I was shaving very thin ribbons off it when threading it in!
If you get yuor bike out of the house or garage and then ride it, they are often fine as things are being exercised, rgardless of the temp.
However stick your bike on a rack (rather than in a car or van), drive to the woods and then try to ride, they are very susceptible to freezing cables, sticky suspension and posts etc...
same problem, same post, thursday night in the chilterns<br />its exactly one month old, but to be fair its seen plenty of rain/flood in its short life<br /><br />grease it up or just swap it? ive got inner/outer in the shed
