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I’ve been considering doing this to one of my bikes for a while. I know it was fairly common bitd.
I get the bit about buzzing the cable stops out, my question is what happens afterwards... is the outer held sufficiently the no-longer-a-cable-stop at each end of the TT?
On a hardtail it works fine, on a FS it's best to find some way of clamping the cable to stop the suspension pulling it through. Giant used to put two back to back stops on the downtube to allow you to run two bits of outer so it couldn't move. A small zip tie done up tightly either side of the guide would probably be enough though.
Ta 🙂
Out of interest OP, whats your reason for wanting to do so?
Not really an answer, but have you considered any of the fancy fully sealed cable solutions? Gore used to do one - basically there were three layers: the usual outer, the usual inner, and then a skinny intermediate layer that would fit through the cable stops but still separate the cable from the outside world.
Not cheap, but I cabled up my bike a few years ago and haven't had to touch it since.
I am looking to do this on my road/commuter bike. The cables go through that funny plastic mount thing under the bottom bracket so get very gunked up and it makes shifting rubbish.
I was just going to run a full length cable down the down tube and zip tie it into place at appropriate points but I wonder if the Gore type system would work better? It would have to fit through the rubbish plastic mount thing though, so probably not.
It would have to fit through the rubbish plastic mount thing though, so probably not.
If it's one of those black plastic plate things, that's usually pop-rivet'd to the shell, there's plenty of room.
If it was me I'd consider using a fully enclosed run of conventional cable along the top tube and down the seatstay using stick on cable guides. I did that on an old Klein hardtail to avoid the ballache of the Y2K-era internal routing, worked well.
Why? I far prefer it the other way round as you get less freeplay in the cables
Out of interest OP, whats your reason for wanting to do so?
Weatherproofing, in a word. I usually fit the tongue type endcaps as a workaround but it can be a pain at times getting hold of them.
AFAIK, the only reason exposed inner TT runs still exist is as a hangover from weightweenie Road days? I’m not aware of it serving a practical purpose although it can make removing a shifter and mech easy without disconnecting anything.
I may decide to leave it as is, after toying several times with buzzing a slot for an internal dropper I’ve eventually left the existing external Lev in place. Every year around this time I find myself wishing for a fully enclosed cable run though, so it may eventually happen...
There should be less cable compression (and hence snappier shifting) with an interrupted outer. However, the more end-stops you have, the more play you introduce too. I'm not convinced it makes any difference in the real world, other than, maybe, for cable operated disk brakes where cable compression should be avoided at all costs.
I can see the argument for increased snappiness from what amounts to higher cable tension, but I bet the extra sleeved end caps I add to try to keep crud out of the casing go some way to negating that...