After last weeks topic about how half the world hates internal routing 'cos you need to make holes in your frames, I thought I might as well post about what i got up to at lunchtime today.
I fancied fitting a dropper to my new'ish - internally & headset routed - Scott Scale and luckily picked up a lovely brand new Fox Transfer SL post of eBay for an absolute steal, but was then faced with the lever conundrum and how I was going to fit one with a Scott Twinloc in place for the forks, a bit of Googlefu and a handy video showing how you can bolt a ZTTO lever to the bolt that holds the Twinloc together popped up, so I ordered one of those.
Now being internally and headset routed, I had to take the stem off - oh the horrors - feed the outer down through the guide blocks and into the down tube, out through the massive covered port under the BB, thread on some of that rubber foam tubing to stop rattles and then up the seat tube.
Slip the inner into the outer, fit the post, bolt the saddle on - ensuring its in the same position as when it had a solid post, put the stem back on and connect to the lever, took nearly 30 minutes from start to finish, and I'm sure you'll all agree it don't half look neat and tidy.
Looks great 👍
I'm firmly in the internally routed cables are better camp.
Similar to my experience the other day when I needed to replace the cable for my dropper.
Well, similar except that I had to remove the chain, cranks, chain guide, chainring, motor and battery to thread it through.
Then refitting the above which took 2 hours of swearing and pleading to get the motor lined up with the stupid removable spacers.
If you think you have it bad try a 2025 Orbea Rise
They have gone for the most complicated , shit headset / internal routing design you could ever hope to come up with 😡😭🤬😤🤔
If you think you have it bad try a 2025 Orbea Rise
They have gone for the most complicated , shit headset / internal routing design you could ever hope to come up with 😡😭🤬😤🤔
Mines a '22. I didn't think it could get any worse than the 2 spacers that fit inside the frame to hold the motor.
I mean, if they just made them threaded... Why wouldn't you make them threaded?
Shall we make them screw into the frame so you can slot the motor in without knocking the spacers out? Nah, let's make it as frustrating as possible.
I like internal routing, it makes bikes look cooler.
If that’s as good as internal routing gets, then I shall continue extolling the virtues of external routing!
I only recently realised there were good and bad internally routed frames.
The old way of the cables being loose in the downtube and having to fish them out of a port with all the associated rattles and/or having to add insulation (not even always possible) etc is totally shit.
On the other hand I recently got a properly routed Revel Rascal and it's ridiculously easy and quick as the routing is totally guided. All you have to do is shove the outer at one end and it comes out at the other end, where you need it. It quite litteraly takes seconds and is quicker than externally what with clips or whatever.
I do think that those stupid cable through the headset things could be an alternative to drilling for a dropper.
There was also a replacement one I saw somewhere with a smaller top bearing so that the cables could fit in slots outside the bearing.
Before my Surly Ogre frame broke you could switch it from gears to single speed in not much more than 30 mins.
The problem is that some people value aesthetics over practicality.
a tidy job for sure.
Is all that 'twin lock' gubbins so you can lock the fork out? Seems like a lot of extra gear for such a simple task.
If that’s as good as internal routing gets, then I shall continue extolling the virtues of external routing!
Apart from no ones made an external dropper for about a decade?
Apart from no ones made an external dropper for about a decade?
What a bike - you know how much I love these! Good work with the cobbled together dropper, saved yourself 80 quid or so there!
ARGH MY EYES!!! A Fox kashima fork with a Fox non-kashima seatpost? What were you thinking!?
I'm only joking. I bought an xc bike the other day. There going for peanuts on ebay. Everyone wants gravel! Forgot XC is more fun on a nice light bike with old-school geometry.
a tidy job for sure.
Is all that 'twin lock' gubbins so you can lock the fork out? Seems like a lot of extra gear for such a simple task.
Yup, it may look like gubbins, but it's far easier to lock the fork out this way than reaching down to the crown, especially when racing- which I will get back to at some point.
ARGH MY EYES!!! A Fox kashima fork with a Fox non-kashima seatpost? What were you thinking!?I'm only joking. I bought an xc bike the other day. There going for peanuts on ebay. Everyone wants gravel! Forgot XC is more fun on a nice light bike with old-school geometry.
Well I was thinking it only cost me just over £60 for the post 😉 and I rather like the way it blends with the rest of the back end, all black & white with a smattering of silver/ grey.
Couldn't agree more on the gravel bike front, had one of them, swapped it for a previous generation one of these, which proved to be much better. A nice light XC HT can do pretty much everything - within reason.
If that’s as good as internal routing gets, then I shall continue extolling the virtues of external routing!
To be fair its easy to do on this frame but, my lads Lapierre XR is even better, all tubed from the ports on the head-tube, so that bike is a total breeze.
"Apart from no ones made an external dropper for about a decade?"
Needing a hole in your seat tube for at most a few inches of internal cabling for your dropper is no reason to try to put all the rest of the cables inside the frame! Obviously when anyoje says "external routing" nowadays they don't mean keeping the dropper cable entirely external because any decent dropper has internal actuation.
Personally, I tend to only put hoses and cables through frames, keeps the apertures reasonable, but each to their own.
So how do you feed a rear brake caliper through the tubes?
The same way you thread a 12 speed long cage derailleur through them?
“The same way you thread a 12 speed long cage derailleur through them?”
Curiously I’ve never had to bleed a gear cable…
With external routing if you have a disaster on an away trip you can buy a new brake and fit it in minutes.
Like I keep blathering on these threads I would rather have fully external routing (especially for brakes) but I think the reality of 2025 is that poking cables and hoses through at least some of your bikes tubes is likely to be a thing for all of us at some point.
I suppose the reality question for you is where do you draw a line?
obviously the OP prefers the aesthetic and aero look of completely hidden lines, I’m not sure a dropper installation is the biggest challenge in this context but appreciate it’s achieved what was desired.
my own most recent internal routing adventure was a gravel bike with ports behind the head tube and a big old opening under the BB. I had to get rear brake ana F/R mech cables through there it was fine but I had to foam line the outers so they wouldn’t rattle and they’re still pretty visible, where the run outside… I can’t really see what the frame gains over having some zip-tie points under the downtube (aside from some cost savings perhaps).
it’s sat in the garage next to other bikes with fully external routing and I know which bikes I prefer having to work on.
The next conundrum for me is deciding if I want to keep my external routed dropper for the frame I’m moving my MTB bits to, it’s perfectly possible to reuse the external dropper, the gear and brake routing runs under the TT and has space enough to neatly run the dropper cable too, but there’s dropper ports in the down tube and seat tube and it’s just going to annoy me having them empty (and the plastic inserts will probably go missing), but it feels like ditching a perfectly good bit of kit because of one stupid (but now ubiquitous) feature on a frame.
