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Bought my son a used Merlin off here last year and I'm finally getting round to the strip down and refurb I promised him.
The thing is with it being quite an old frame it's currently setup with thousands of cable guides which I don't use as it runs a 1x10 and hydraulic discs so I was wondering what people's thoughts were on diy internal hose/cable routing?
Was thinking a single hole at the front of the top tube to take the rear hose and gear cable then maybe one each side near the seat tube for them both to exit on the correct sides?
Is this a safe/doable idea?
He's not hitting any major trails on it (only 9yrs)so it shouldn't be under much stress!
Plan to also remove the current top tube mounts and V brake bosses as well to clean the looks up.
[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50329121368_f60e4114ea_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50329121368_f60e4114ea_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2jFpUkS ]Merlin[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/190147021@N07/ ]Dave Barratt[/url], on Flickr
[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50329968267_8889b2d82e_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50329968267_8889b2d82e_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2jFuf6z ]Merlin[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/190147021@N07/ ]Dave Barratt[/url], on Flickr
Personally I wouldn't bother, I'm not a fan of internal routing. In your instance there won't be any liners/sleeves so it will be a fag to route. Also what are you going to do about cable rattle? Only option I can think of is zip ties, which means more faffing.
I'd just drill out the top cable guides so you can thread full outers on there, it's what I did with my wife's old Specialized something or other frame.
Internal routing is overrated.
It's a lot of effort to go to for very little benefit (IMO).
The huge bonus of external cable/hose routing is that it's accessible for maintenance/replacements (which probably falls to Dad?), where as internal routing can make a ten minute re-cabling job and hour and ten minutes of pointless faff...
Will it make his bike work any better? if the answer is no then it's not worth the time it takes...
looking at it you could maybe drill/open out the brake cable stop on the TT to route the hose through and lose those adapters.
Personally I quite like sectional gear cables, but if you want to run a full length outer you could drill that out too, I'd maybe hang on to the Front mech cable stops in case you need to route an external dropper cable in the future, and if in really offends and you're never going to fit a front mech you could file the front mech cable stop off the back of the seat tube while you're taking the V-brake bosses off. Of course then you'll probably want to rattle can the whole thing just to make it look prettier again... So you're spending at least a weekend on this by that point.
TBH if it were me, I'd drill out the rear brake stops and leave it at that. You know He'll go and grow out of it ten minutes after you finish tarting it up.
Another in the wouldn't bother camp.
Drilling out the cable stops so you can run full length outer is worth doing and simple enough though.
Drilling a hole creates a stress concentration. This probably won't cause the frame to fail directly but it will risk cracks propagating from the hole over time due to fatigue. Depends how long you want it to last really. I wouldn't bother.