@@squngy0 He means instead of using the housing all the way through, use that liner on what would be bare cable to reduce friction where it passes under the BB
Yes, this is the way to go! I've had great experience with this method. I've found that those transitions introduce more friction than a proper length of cable housing. Also weatherproofing is greatly improved. For the rattling, Jagwire makes an 'Internal Housing Damper', which is quite expensive for a foam tube, but it's small and easy to install, weighs next to nothing and works perfectly.
You only use a small section (6-7 cm) of the "white tubing" (cable liner) at the bottom bracket cable guide. The bend in the tensioned cable as it bends around the BB keeps the piece of cable liner in place.
You can use a length of inner liner for the bottom bracket area only, it usually stays in place without any issues. It's a trick I learned from an oldtimer I used to do clubrides with, they used the liner back in the day for steel bottom bracket shells with steel cable guides, when a plastic cable guide could not be used due to bottom bracket shell shape or cutouts.
Strangely enough, this solution is more popular for MTBs and touring bikes mainly because it allows the cable and housing to be far more immune to contamination with water/dust/mud and to reduce or delay the loss of shifting performance over time when the bikes are ridden in wet/muddy conditions. However, it actually adds up friction compared to a *properly installed* gear shifter cable setup where the cable actually runs free within the frame. In your particular case, the fact that it improved shifting is very likely due to the following factors: - a change in the cable path compared to the initial setup, with less sharp cable turns - poorly designed entry/exit points of the shift cable that made it rub against them instead of freely sliding - inadequate ferrules at the end of the cable housing - extreme entry/exit angles of the cables, making them rub against the surface of the entry/exit points On that note, Jagwire Pro Slick cables work wonders on any mechanical gear or brake system, as they are stainless, polished and a tiny bit thinner than regular cables. They drastically reduce the friction in the system, especially when used with compressionless housings and good quality ferrules (like those made by Jagwire).
100% agree on this as a bike mechanic. I highly doubt the bb cable guide is causing the poor shifting performance. Never saw a new one doing so. Hope no one falls for the poor advice of this vid.
Maybe - They could just route the cables in air outside the frame supported infrequently with some sort of standoffs. This would eliminate friction as a major portion of the cables would only pass through air.
Great as always Luke. Personally I'm trying to avoid PTFE lubes and fluoro chems in my bike products. Kind of mad we're worried about forever chemicals in the environment and also buying lubricants that contain them and wash off in the rain 🫠🥖
The main friction point is the plastic guide beneath the bracket. On my wife bicycle I put some teflon tubes over the cables. I had these teflon tubes laying around from my 3D printer. You can also use pieces of cable housing only to guide the cable around the bracket. Teflon tube make changing gears very smooth, but they don't last as long as outer casing.
Friction is ok, it won't affect shifting accuracy. What you eliminated is the flex of that cable guide. as the cables are tensioned due to the pull, that plastic guide flex which greatly affects shifting. That's why the problem only happens on the first few cogs then it disappears when you reach the bigger ones. It's because the plastic has reached its maximum flex. The next problem if you did not perform that hack is that plastic guide will eventually break. We had the same thing on our Canyon Frames.
If you’re gonna run the cable housing through the entire bike, there is foam housing that goes over the cable housing that reduces rattling. What’s nice is that at the derailleur end you can have it pole out of the back to cover that hole and prevent anything from getting in. It’s doesn’t weigh much either. And it also makes pushing replacement cable housing easier in the future.
Did the same thing on my Cannondale Topstone (Aluminum) because it had an exposed cable on chainstay and it would get dirty over time, requiring more maintenance. With a full run of housing I haven’t had to touch it in a couple years.
To fix the issue of inner liners sliding you can use a pick, heat it up and then use it to flare the end which should keep it in place where you insert the liner. I tried the full cable housing but the bend going up to the front derailleur was causing too much friction. You can buy specific inner cable liner which are thicker and more slick than those plastic tube cabling guides.
I used the jagwire liners through my frame (105)! Works like a charm! For my gravel frame (grx 820) I used outer cables through the frame (fully internal) and that works extremely well! A bit more responsive for the grx groupset but that could also be the quality of the groupset itself...
At 6:30 you're kind of describing the jagwire elite sealed system, which has a similar liner that runs continuously throughout and solves all the problems you described.
I did with with am XC MTB, which stupidly had exposed cable under the BB. Sure enough it picked up gunk and shifting went to garbage. Drilled the stops and ran a continuous run. It's been trouble free since. Adding the foam outer inside the downtube eliminates rattles.
To reduce the rattling, you can try to sleeve the housing with foam tube from the BB cable guide port. Or from the head tube before setting the fork in. That's what I did for my TFSA/Trifox X16 QR equvalent.
Giant Trinity is like that, but my propel which is similar to your bike, doesn’t have continuous cable housing and it still shifts perfectly. A hack to stop cable rattling (if you can get inside the frame) is to install tie wraps around the housing; the long cable tie ends will act as flexible stand offs, so the cable housing is not against the frame.
The rubber o-ring you find in a lot of the housing ferrules adds an enormous amount of drag, so just cutting those out helps immensely. And you can always dunk the nylon BB guide in a hot mix of paraffin and WS2. Nice and slick then!
My Look bike had similar problem. I installed Ultegra 11 speed and the cable from the rear derailleur rubber stop would get sucked into the frame, so we decided to go with the full housing, and it worked perfectly. I do not think it was just using lower end equipment. 🥖🥖🥖🥖🥖
I think the 12s is more sensitive too. Atleast thats my experience upgrading an old type of Fatbike carbon frame to 12s. It has framestops and an internal tube for the wire. My easiest solution is just to epoxy cable holders to the frame. I just havent got around to it yet. Thank you
My Argon18 Nitrogen uses the same method - continuous run of cable housing all the way to the rear stay and the shifting is immaculate. Also, the replacement is a bit easier, compared to my other bike where it runs the cable naked through the frame.
From my experience as a bike mechanic, only do this when interrupted housing cable routing has a cable guide in bends (like the one in the BB) as those notoriously suck. In most interrupted routing where it's just two parallel housing stops and the exposed cable is in a straight line, it has considerably less friction than a full-length housing. Granted, they need more maintenance, but nothing much other than a quick spritz of silicon lube inside the segments of housing to keep them fresh and longer lasting.
If anyone is worried about noise or jangling about, from the cable housing inside the frame... You can get some foam tubing specifically for the housing. Yes its another thing to put inside the frame, but it makes a big difference
There are foam jackets (like miniature pool noodles) you can run your housing inside and they help a bunch with housing rattling noises inside the frame. When I bought my Aliexpress magnetic routing kit there was a variant of the product that included some of that foam jackets.
Internal cable routing often has the housing segmented at the rear dropout and there is a special internal ferrule that comes out when you're doing roadside maintenance and gets lost in the grass. Instead of getting a new special ferrule, just run housing through the entire frame and you will notice an improvement in shifting. Even with ultegra r8000
Yep, i found the same shifting improvement on sram rival moving from a inner routed carbon frame to a partially outer routed metallic frame To avoid the noise of the housing slap, i put 2 small cable tie on the house to keep the housing in tension and avoid loose slapping.
Nice video, thanks for the suggestion! Alternative approach: what about trying to reduce the friction under the BB as much as possible? Grease that plastic slot with PTFE lube, and after that apply some duct tape over the plastic slot to protect it from dirt. Other solution: some graphite in the slot (simply - take a pen and "write" with it on those slots until a serios layer of carbon is deposited where the un-housed cables go.) This suggestion is borrowed from electric guitars, where you want your strings to move as easily as possible through the nut :) :) :) The standard solution there is with the pen.
I always thought the less outer cable the less friction. Then I got a gravel frame that I had to use full length housings and the shifting is really smooth. Good quality cables and housings help too.
Hi i have used this method for a number of years , best hack is to use the BBB speedwire cable with a rteflon covering , slightly expensive at 8 euros but well worth it for a buttery shift
A lot of bikes with Bottom Bracket cable guides have very smooth frictionless shifting - it may not be the solution for a lot of bikes and I suspect your friction may have been in the cable path somewhere like shifter bar bands etc.... MTBers have done this for a long time because it prevents grit from fouling cables...it can be a be a flamin' nightmare on road bikes with tricked internal routing setups - drill at your own risk...
If you are getting rattle, you can buy dampening/silencing foam sleeve that sits on the outside of the cable housing/hydro hoses, I pretty much fit it is as standard on a build these days. Don't be temped to use packing foam as a free alternative because it squeaks like a million mice in your down tube (speaking from experience).
My 2020 Orbea Orca Aero seems to have some kind of semi transparent tubing at the bottom. It also has quite a fancy metal frame stop box at the top of the downtube!
I did that a couple of years ago with my Planet X Ec 130 but boy did it rattle. The other thing I did was dip my cables in ptfe powder that I bought for chain waxing, this worked really well. 🥖🥖🥖
Any breaks or transitions in the cable outer just allows moisture and dirt in causing crap shifting quicker than it should. full cable outta front controls to mechs for years or smooth trouble free shifting 👌🏻
I've bought two new frames with semi-internal routing recently: one CF and one Ti. First thing I did with both before any other build activity was to check the cable routing - and both could cope with gear and brake outer housing along full length without any mods at all. Extra weight of housing is negligible (compared with extra weight of the user - :) )
FYI, a good quality shifter cable won't need replacement for a very long time (up to a decade even under very high shifting) if it is run continuously and is of the correct length.
"Mountainbikes have been set up this way for years"... I am always amazed that roadies are much more concerned about weight than mtb-ers. Mountainbiking is a much more dynamic sport, up and down all the time, throwing the thing in the corners and flying through the air with the lump of weight hanging on for dear life by the cleats. So I'd say the outer cable housing is well worth the 'penalty' on a road bike, nice vid
Luke, if the liquid lubricant doesn't hold up, they make grease injection syringes, for housed cables. Inject grease down either one end, or both ends, and your cable will hold up longer, and run smoothly. 🥖🥖
Segmented system with full length liner but as little housing as possible (use stops and run liner full length). Jagwire 31 strand slick cables, installed dry with graphite powder as the lube. Nothing slicker. The RISK brand from Aliexpress or original Nokon system are good choices.
That frame isnt designed for non-continuous cable run. If they included that kind of cable stop thats a mistake. You can see this in the angle of how the cable goes through the dropout, as well as the under BB guide being oversized to fit 4-5mm outers. The fact that you had all that friction beforehand is just because you were never supposed to run interrupted cable outers in the first place.
Actually some of the frames come like this out of the factory, mine (an aliexpress gravel aluminium frame), comes with holes to use the entire cable hose from top to bottom and it works great, i have an LTwoo rx 12 system and works great, the only issue is that from my experience the LTwoo shifters start to deteriorate in terms of shifting to early; i have been riding my setup for 2 years now and i have to do maintenance to the shifters twice, the good part is that the mechanism is simple to dissasamble and is independent of the brake line, so it's easy, and it's just a matter of degrease, new grease, new cable and reinstall
In theory exposed cables have less friction than a full housing from end to end, in practice ferrules & angled cuts, even plastic ones create a lot of friction, especially with dust and dirt getting in from the cuts... We don't live in a lab.
For the rear, could you splice two pieces of outer housing together just after it exits the frame so you can just replace that short piece of housing and leave the long chunk in the frame?
Regarding the return spring I say it's quite the opposite. I struggled to adjust the reae derailleur in my ltwoo GR9 groupset and I couldn't get it shift precisely alrhough running the cable fully in housing I tried three different GR9 derailleurs to no avail. All of them generated a lot of resistance on the cable pull. When I swapped the rd for shimano grx 812 I noticed immediately the lower resistance and I could set it up properly. It is still not perfect. there is still much resistance compared to e.g. my Tiagra 4700 or Ultegra 6800 groupsets and there's no way you could race with these brifters because they are not precise enough but it's much better than with factory gr9 derailleur. I think the issue is also with the spool mechanism of the brifter and the angle at which the cable is being spooled in. All in all I believe that the weaker the return/jockey Cage spring, the easier and smoother the shifting.
for lubing cables light grease like Sram Butter/Slickoleum is good, works better than oil or "ptfe" stuff RSP Slick Kick would also be okay for that use case
This, of course, also means you can replace inner cables without any of the faff of internal routing. Best of both worlds. However, these will be harder to clean out than the first system if the cables gum up.
Both WD-40 and GT85 (whether PTFE is included or not) contain mineral spirits for cleaning. Many people out there believe that it is not a good product to use on bikes for the degreasing effect? Why don't you apply a light grease to the cable and inside of the housing?
Any time you put a fluid in a cable housing you are creating the potential for hydraulic lock. What I do is spray my cables with graphite, let the cables dry then put cables in the housing.
Mmh a trick could be on the bottom plastic part what you mention. Take a inner tube of the housing an position it on the cable on that part. That inner tube is Teflon and should have the same improvement but only need that little part. And no it stays on place. I use that Methode long time and you can fill that little tube with grease
Hahaha whats the chances? I was just recabling my bike I noticed that I had a spare framestop that has the holes drilled out to allow for this, and it wasn't till I had already routed the brake hose through so carried on as normal but its in my 'todo list' for doing this next time I redo the cabling.. so yeah, check if you have spare framestops that are pre-drilled... also you can use foam tubes to silence the hoses.. good to know that it will make a difference! One thing I do need to bear in mind is the outer exit point for the FD, as its a grx one it might need to seat at the FD itself.
I have this set-up on my Cube cross bike but the shifting is still absolutely useless! The cable doesn't release immediately so up shifts are really slow to happen
Fibrax do an outer with aluminium strands rather than steel, super light and improved the shifting on my bike 👌saved just over 70 grams on brake and gear outer with the bike being external route pretty good saving 🥖🥖🥖🥖
On my AliExpress Gravel Frame with T47 Bottom Bracket this was even the only possible way to do it. There where no Cable Stops etc. and because this was my first Build, i thought that´s standard. Funny😅
I think they do this on MTBs because they're expecting that the cables would get fouled if there isn't a housing around them. Trying to clean the mud out would be super annoying.
not really, they do this cuz having exposed hoses is dangerous (i had a frame with exposed hoses at the bottom, so i'm telling you this from experience). With this type of mechanism the cable is protected in the bottom bracket so any type of branch, rock or whatever doesn't get stuck with it and doesn't pull you to the ground; In the other hand, when you have hoses exposed in the bottom bracket any branch or rock could get stuck with it and in some cases that could cause an accident; like i said, this happened to me, 1 branch got stuck with one of the hoses in the bottom bracket, i went to the ground, the rear mech got damaged, and the rest is history.
@@josecamilojimenez2784 That's a different thing than I'm talking about, but you're right that having externally routed anything on MTBs is like that. But what I'm saying is that running internal cable housing rather than bare internal cables makes sense because ingress of water and mud is likely to ruin the performance of your shifting with no way to fix it. The hoses keep the shifting clean no matter how bad it is inside the frame. I had a plug on the underside of my CX bike fall out, and when I brought my bike into the shop, they were like, "there's about a kilo of sand in here," and that was just from riding around in the rain on a hard packed gravel path that I trained on.
It's taken you how long to discover this? I would never run a gear cable without a full length outer. And as you say. "Us mountain bikers" have been doing this for years.
And here I was wanting to improve shifting on my Enduro MTB... Well, this weird exposed shift cable could never work on any full suspension bike, and you don't really want anything running under the bottom bracket anyway.
I did this on an old rim braked Giant Propel on the rear brake, worked a treat. I might try this on my ICAN Gravel X as the downshifts can be somewhat sluggish
@@carlosflanders518 I had a very early Propel SL, the brake stops were aluminum glued into the carbon, the aluminum corroded and started to detach from the top tube. I drilled out the stops and ran a brake outer direct from the lever to the caliper.
@@neilpassingham7309 Changed the rear brake to a fouriers and ran a full liner internally. Still not great but doesn't stick any more. Ran full shift cable housing from shifter through top tube and out to rear derailleur to get acceptable shifting. Drilled out top tube stop but could route housing past rear cable stop without drilling.
Very bad advice. Please don't drill holes into your frame. Use a liner instead which is like the inner part of a shifting cable without the housing. Costs a few cents and does the same. Done that for 30 years. Thumbs down for this video.
Lubing cables with GT85 / WD40 is not the best idea as it attracts dust and dirt over time. Works great to begin with, but will attract more dirt over time. It a long section, but the inner cable still drags dirt into the cable liner
Jagwire has something called a 'slick lube liner' that goes over exposed cables. I used those inside the frame.
Most high performance housings have an equivalent to that, it isn't unique to Jagwire.
Jagwire is a good option though.
I cut the cable along its length and pull out this inner so there is no need to drill end stops and run the outer through the frame.
@@squngy0 you can put those liner only inside the frame but no need for full length.
Gore cable and housing had the best version of this.
RIP :(
@@squngy0 He means instead of using the housing all the way through, use that liner on what would be bare cable to reduce friction where it passes under the BB
Yes, this is the way to go! I've had great experience with this method. I've found that those transitions introduce more friction than a proper length of cable housing. Also weatherproofing is greatly improved. For the rattling, Jagwire makes an 'Internal Housing Damper', which is quite expensive for a foam tube, but it's small and easy to install, weighs next to nothing and works perfectly.
You only use a small section (6-7 cm) of the "white tubing" (cable liner) at the bottom bracket cable guide.
The bend in the tensioned cable as it bends around the BB keeps the piece of cable liner in place.
x2 - Been doing it this way for years. A drop of Triflow or thin lube into the liner is all you need every so often to keep it frictionless.
This is how I do it too
You can use a length of inner liner for the bottom bracket area only, it usually stays in place without any issues. It's a trick I learned from an oldtimer I used to do clubrides with, they used the liner back in the day for steel bottom bracket shells with steel cable guides, when a plastic cable guide could not be used due to bottom bracket shell shape or cutouts.
Strangely enough, this solution is more popular for MTBs and touring bikes mainly because it allows the cable and housing to be far more immune to contamination with water/dust/mud and to reduce or delay the loss of shifting performance over time when the bikes are ridden in wet/muddy conditions. However, it actually adds up friction compared to a *properly installed* gear shifter cable setup where the cable actually runs free within the frame.
In your particular case, the fact that it improved shifting is very likely due to the following factors:
- a change in the cable path compared to the initial setup, with less sharp cable turns
- poorly designed entry/exit points of the shift cable that made it rub against them instead of freely sliding
- inadequate ferrules at the end of the cable housing
- extreme entry/exit angles of the cables, making them rub against the surface of the entry/exit points
On that note, Jagwire Pro Slick cables work wonders on any mechanical gear or brake system, as they are stainless, polished and a tiny bit thinner than regular cables. They drastically reduce the friction in the system, especially when used with compressionless housings and good quality ferrules (like those made by Jagwire).
100% agree on this as a bike mechanic. I highly doubt the bb cable guide is causing the poor shifting performance. Never saw a new one doing so. Hope no one falls for the poor advice of this vid.
Very good points
Maybe - They could just route the cables in air outside the frame supported infrequently with some sort of standoffs. This would eliminate friction as a major portion of the cables would only pass through air.
genius idea , how did you think of that
They could also make them slotted so you could pop the cable out and lubricate it!?
😳🤯🤯🤯
Great as always Luke. Personally I'm trying to avoid PTFE lubes and fluoro chems in my bike products. Kind of mad we're worried about forever chemicals in the environment and also buying lubricants that contain them and wash off in the rain 🫠🥖
100% this. We need to outlaw PTFE in a hurry.
Yep, PTFE = "Teflon"
..... yeah....you are clueless....
The main friction point is the plastic guide beneath the bracket. On my wife bicycle I put some teflon tubes over the cables. I had these teflon tubes laying around from my 3D printer. You can also use pieces of cable housing only to guide the cable around the bracket. Teflon tube make changing gears very smooth, but they don't last as long as outer casing.
Friction is ok, it won't affect shifting accuracy. What you eliminated is the flex of that cable guide. as the cables are tensioned due to the pull, that plastic guide flex which greatly affects shifting. That's why the problem only happens on the first few cogs then it disappears when you reach the bigger ones. It's because the plastic has reached its maximum flex. The next problem if you did not perform that hack is that plastic guide will eventually break. We had the same thing on our Canyon Frames.
If you’re gonna run the cable housing through the entire bike, there is foam housing that goes over the cable housing that reduces rattling. What’s nice is that at the derailleur end you can have it pole out of the back to cover that hole and prevent anything from getting in. It’s doesn’t weigh much either. And it also makes pushing replacement cable housing easier in the future.
Did the same thing on my Cannondale Topstone (Aluminum) because it had an exposed cable on chainstay and it would get dirty over time, requiring more maintenance. With a full run of housing I haven’t had to touch it in a couple years.
To fix the issue of inner liners sliding you can use a pick, heat it up and then use it to flare the end which should keep it in place where you insert the liner. I tried the full cable housing but the bend going up to the front derailleur was causing too much friction. You can buy specific inner cable liner which are thicker and more slick than those plastic tube cabling guides.
I used the jagwire liners through my frame (105)! Works like a charm! For my gravel frame (grx 820) I used outer cables through the frame (fully internal) and that works extremely well! A bit more responsive for the grx groupset but that could also be the quality of the groupset itself...
You are right.This is nessesary for good shifting.
At 6:30 you're kind of describing the jagwire elite sealed system, which has a similar liner that runs continuously throughout and solves all the problems you described.
I did with with am XC MTB, which stupidly had exposed cable under the BB. Sure enough it picked up gunk and shifting went to garbage. Drilled the stops and ran a continuous run. It's been trouble free since. Adding the foam outer inside the downtube eliminates rattles.
On some frames the rear brake hose cover is big enough to bodge it to get rear full length outer in there along with brake hose, saves drilling frame.
To reduce the rattling, you can try to sleeve the housing with foam tube from the BB cable guide port. Or from the head tube before setting the fork in. That's what I did for my TFSA/Trifox X16 QR equvalent.
When the bonus clip (dodododoooodoooo)was so good that it became a whole new video ❤
Giant Trinity is like that, but my propel which is similar to your bike, doesn’t have continuous cable housing and it still shifts perfectly. A hack to stop cable rattling (if you can get inside the frame) is to install tie wraps around the housing; the long cable tie ends will act as flexible stand offs, so the cable housing is not against the frame.
I always do solid wiring on all my bikes, so it doesn 't get clogged with dirt and the cable slides better in a shirt
Hi Luke, following your channel since 2020, let's gooooo! 🥖🥖🥖🥖
Recently had issue with the rear frame bung failing and the cable housing pushed into the frame. This looks like a much better option.
The rubber o-ring you find in a lot of the housing ferrules adds an enormous amount of drag, so just cutting those out helps immensely.
And you can always dunk the nylon BB guide in a hot mix of paraffin and WS2. Nice and slick then!
My Look bike had similar problem. I installed Ultegra 11 speed and the cable from the rear derailleur rubber stop would get sucked into the frame, so we decided to go with the full housing, and it worked perfectly. I do not think it was just using lower end equipment. 🥖🥖🥖🥖🥖
I think the 12s is more sensitive too. Atleast thats my experience upgrading an old type of Fatbike carbon frame to 12s. It has framestops and an internal tube for the wire. My easiest solution is just to epoxy cable holders to the frame. I just havent got around to it yet. Thank you
My Argon18 Nitrogen uses the same method - continuous run of cable housing all the way to the rear stay and the shifting is immaculate. Also, the replacement is a bit easier, compared to my other bike where it runs the cable naked through the frame.
From my experience as a bike mechanic, only do this when interrupted housing cable routing has a cable guide in bends (like the one in the BB) as those notoriously suck. In most interrupted routing where it's just two parallel housing stops and the exposed cable is in a straight line, it has considerably less friction than a full-length housing. Granted, they need more maintenance, but nothing much other than a quick spritz of silicon lube inside the segments of housing to keep them fresh and longer lasting.
If anyone is worried about noise or jangling about, from the cable housing inside the frame... You can get some foam tubing specifically for the housing. Yes its another thing to put inside the frame, but it makes a big difference
There are foam jackets (like miniature pool noodles) you can run your housing inside and they help a bunch with housing rattling noises inside the frame. When I bought my Aliexpress magnetic routing kit there was a variant of the product that included some of that foam jackets.
Excellent idea. What about water ingress, trapped to rust and friction problem?
Internal cable routing often has the housing segmented at the rear dropout and there is a special internal ferrule that comes out when you're doing roadside maintenance and gets lost in the grass. Instead of getting a new special ferrule, just run housing through the entire frame and you will notice an improvement in shifting. Even with ultegra r8000
Yep, i found the same shifting improvement on sram rival moving from a inner routed carbon frame to a partially outer routed metallic frame
To avoid the noise of the housing slap, i put 2 small cable tie on the house to keep the housing in tension and avoid loose slapping.
that's why you add foam tubes outside the lines so it can't rattle
This is what we do in the MTB world to avoid rattles.
Nice video, thanks for the suggestion!
Alternative approach: what about trying to reduce the friction under the BB as much as possible? Grease that plastic slot with PTFE lube, and after that apply some duct tape over the plastic slot to protect it from dirt.
Other solution: some graphite in the slot (simply - take a pen and "write" with it on those slots until a serios layer of carbon is deposited where the un-housed cables go.) This suggestion is borrowed from electric guitars, where you want your strings to move as easily as possible through the nut :) :) :) The standard solution there is with the pen.
Been doing this for years, only way to go. No need to spray stuff inside the cable if you’re using a decent grease when you thread the cable.
I always thought the less outer cable the less friction. Then I got a gravel frame that I had to use full length housings and the shifting is really smooth. Good quality cables and housings help too.
Hi i have used this method for a number of years , best hack is to use the BBB speedwire cable with a rteflon covering , slightly expensive at 8 euros but well worth it for a buttery shift
A lot of bikes with Bottom Bracket cable guides have very smooth frictionless shifting - it may not be the solution for a lot of bikes and I suspect your friction may have been in the cable path somewhere like shifter bar bands etc.... MTBers have done this for a long time because it prevents grit from fouling cables...it can be a be a flamin' nightmare on road bikes with tricked internal routing setups - drill at your own risk...
If you are getting rattle, you can buy dampening/silencing foam sleeve that sits on the outside of the cable housing/hydro hoses, I pretty much fit it is as standard on a build these days. Don't be temped to use packing foam as a free alternative because it squeaks like a million mice in your down tube (speaking from experience).
Once the outer housing is through the frame, it makes changing inner cable regularly so much easier.
In the UK , PTFE has been removed from GT85
My 2020 Orbea Orca Aero seems to have some kind of semi transparent tubing at the bottom. It also has quite a fancy metal frame stop box at the top of the downtube!
I did that a couple of years ago with my Planet X Ec 130 but boy did it rattle.
The other thing I did was dip my cables in ptfe powder that I bought for chain waxing, this worked really well. 🥖🥖🥖
Any breaks or transitions in the cable outer just allows moisture and dirt in causing crap shifting quicker than it should. full cable outta front controls to mechs for years or smooth trouble free shifting 👌🏻
Add a little bit of Drislide and it will shift even better. Its what I use at the shop I work at. Clean and dry lubricant
You can use Fibrax ultralight gear cable outer that uses aluminum rather than steel cable
How can you do that on the front? If you Drill the stop you dont have a stop at all
I've bought two new frames with semi-internal routing recently: one CF and one Ti. First thing I did with both before any other build activity was to check the cable routing - and both could cope with gear and brake outer housing along full length without any mods at all. Extra weight of housing is negligible (compared with extra weight of the user - :) )
My boi really made a whole video out of his last bonus clip
Still insta liked before even watching 🥖🥖🥖
FYI, a good quality shifter cable won't need replacement for a very long time (up to a decade even under very high shifting) if it is run continuously and is of the correct length.
"Mountainbikes have been set up this way for years"... I am always amazed that roadies are much more concerned about weight than mtb-ers. Mountainbiking is a much more dynamic sport, up and down all the time, throwing the thing in the corners and flying through the air with the lump of weight hanging on for dear life by the cleats. So I'd say the outer cable housing is well worth the 'penalty' on a road bike, nice vid
4:27 another option, wrap a couple of layers of vulcanizing rubber tape around the cable.
Luke, if the liquid lubricant doesn't hold up, they make grease injection syringes, for housed cables. Inject grease down either one end, or both ends, and your cable will hold up longer, and run smoothly. 🥖🥖
I used the jagwire cable with the polished inner cable. Works way better and longer then ptfe lube
2:40 posh cotton buds there, Tesco sells a 200-pack for 50p, consider them next time :)
Segmented system with full length liner but as little housing as possible (use stops and run liner full length). Jagwire 31 strand slick cables, installed dry with graphite powder as the lube. Nothing slicker. The RISK brand from Aliexpress or original Nokon system are good choices.
That frame isnt designed for non-continuous cable run. If they included that kind of cable stop thats a mistake. You can see this in the angle of how the cable goes through the dropout, as well as the under BB guide being oversized to fit 4-5mm outers.
The fact that you had all that friction beforehand is just because you were never supposed to run interrupted cable outers in the first place.
Actually some of the frames come like this out of the factory, mine (an aliexpress gravel aluminium frame), comes with holes to use the entire cable hose from top to bottom and it works great, i have an LTwoo rx 12 system and works great, the only issue is that from my experience the LTwoo shifters start to deteriorate in terms of shifting to early; i have been riding my setup for 2 years now and i have to do maintenance to the shifters twice, the good part is that the mechanism is simple to dissasamble and is independent of the brake line, so it's easy, and it's just a matter of degrease, new grease, new cable and reinstall
I use lock oil/lube (which have PTFE) in my wire housing. Works like a charm, but it is very viscous.
I didnt even know the casing is terminated on road bikes with the stop 😂 I always install the whole housing inside the frame 😮
In theory exposed cables have less friction than a full housing from end to end, in practice ferrules & angled cuts, even plastic ones create a lot of friction, especially with dust and dirt getting in from the cuts...
We don't live in a lab.
For the rear, could you splice two pieces of outer housing together just after it exits the frame so you can just replace that short piece of housing and leave the long chunk in the frame?
slick lube liner instead of a nylon tube might help in this case.
Regarding the return spring I say it's quite the opposite. I struggled to adjust the reae derailleur in my ltwoo GR9 groupset and I couldn't get it shift precisely alrhough running the cable fully in housing I tried three different GR9 derailleurs to no avail. All of them generated a lot of resistance on the cable pull. When I swapped the rd for shimano grx 812 I noticed immediately the lower resistance and I could set it up properly. It is still not perfect. there is still much resistance compared to e.g. my Tiagra 4700 or Ultegra 6800 groupsets and there's no way you could race with these brifters because they are not precise enough but it's much better than with factory gr9 derailleur. I think the issue is also with the spool mechanism of the brifter and the angle at which the cable is being spooled in. All in all I believe that the weaker the return/jockey Cage spring, the easier and smoother the shifting.
I wonder if injecting some fluid into the Teflon tube reduces friction or increases it?
What bike is that? Looks exactly like a canyon endurace, but it's not that is it? I don't think it says canyon on the down tube.
for lubing cables light grease like Sram Butter/Slickoleum is good, works better than oil or "ptfe" stuff
RSP Slick Kick would also be okay for that use case
This, of course, also means you can replace inner cables without any of the faff of internal routing. Best of both worlds. However, these will be harder to clean out than the first system if the cables gum up.
Welcome to a hack from 90s mountain biking :D
What do you think about the new gravel drivetrain of microshift sword?
GT85 is lovely stuff. 👌🏼
Both WD-40 and GT85 (whether PTFE is included or not) contain mineral spirits for cleaning. Many people out there believe that it is not a good product to use on bikes for the degreasing effect? Why don't you apply a light grease to the cable and inside of the housing?
06:50
with the right size of the nylon tube / liner, you can fix it on shimano cable stop (which has tongue)
Any time you put a fluid in a cable housing you are creating the potential for hydraulic lock. What I do is spray my cables with graphite, let the cables dry then put cables in the housing.
Mmh a trick could be on the bottom plastic part what you mention.
Take a inner tube of the housing an position it on the cable on that part.
That inner tube is Teflon and should have the same improvement but only need that little part.
And no it stays on place.
I use that Methode long time and you can fill that little tube with grease
Tried this with di2. Made no difference.
@germurphy4986 of course it wouldn’t make a difference because di2 is electronic.
Is that a bike passing you or a whoosh?
Maybe drill a bigger hole?
Stayed for the bonus clip...
You could used PTFE tube under the bottom bracket instead of running a cable all the way down through the frame...
Hahaha whats the chances? I was just recabling my bike I noticed that I had a spare framestop that has the holes drilled out to allow for this, and it wasn't till I had already routed the brake hose through so carried on as normal but its in my 'todo list' for doing this next time I redo the cabling.. so yeah, check if you have spare framestops that are pre-drilled... also you can use foam tubes to silence the hoses.. good to know that it will make a difference! One thing I do need to bear in mind is the outer exit point for the FD, as its a grx one it might need to seat at the FD itself.
🥖🥖Shifting crispy as a baguette
I have this set-up on my Cube cross bike but the shifting is still absolutely useless! The cable doesn't release immediately so up shifts are really slow to happen
They make foam covers for the cable housing so it doesn't rattle.
Fibrax do an outer with aluminium strands rather than steel, super light and improved the shifting on my bike 👌saved just over 70 grams on brake and gear outer with the bike being external route pretty good saving 🥖🥖🥖🥖
If you have a di2 specific frame and want to run mechanical this technique could work for a 1x setup.
What rear cassette are you using now?
What size bit do you use to drill the stops out?
On my AliExpress Gravel Frame with T47 Bottom Bracket this was even the only possible way to do it. There where no Cable Stops etc. and because this was my first Build, i thought that´s standard. Funny😅
better than oil with polluting teflon that will eventually become mucky, rub in parafine or chain wax on the cable, or drip wax in the housing.
I think they do this on MTBs because they're expecting that the cables would get fouled if there isn't a housing around them. Trying to clean the mud out would be super annoying.
not really, they do this cuz having exposed hoses is dangerous (i had a frame with exposed hoses at the bottom, so i'm telling you this from experience). With this type of mechanism the cable is protected in the bottom bracket so any type of branch, rock or whatever doesn't get stuck with it and doesn't pull you to the ground; In the other hand, when you have hoses exposed in the bottom bracket any branch or rock could get stuck with it and in some cases that could cause an accident; like i said, this happened to me, 1 branch got stuck with one of the hoses in the bottom bracket, i went to the ground, the rear mech got damaged, and the rest is history.
@@josecamilojimenez2784 That's a different thing than I'm talking about, but you're right that having externally routed anything on MTBs is like that. But what I'm saying is that running internal cable housing rather than bare internal cables makes sense because ingress of water and mud is likely to ruin the performance of your shifting with no way to fix it. The hoses keep the shifting clean no matter how bad it is inside the frame. I had a plug on the underside of my CX bike fall out, and when I brought my bike into the shop, they were like, "there's about a kilo of sand in here," and that was just from riding around in the rain on a hard packed gravel path that I trained on.
@@JanGoh-jb5ge That's true to
It's taken you how long to discover this?
I would never run a gear cable without a full length outer. And as you say. "Us mountain bikers" have been doing this for years.
And here I was wanting to improve shifting on my Enduro MTB... Well, this weird exposed shift cable could never work on any full suspension bike, and you don't really want anything running under the bottom bracket anyway.
always did my bikes like this...
So you read my comment about the plastic cable guides but still haven't addressed my repeated requests to bring back the mustache. Surely movember?
I did this on an old rim braked Giant Propel on the rear brake, worked a treat. I might try this on my ICAN Gravel X as the downshifts can be somewhat sluggish
Done the same thing on my propel. Shifting went from poor to ok. Worst-designed cable routing I've ever seen.
@@carlosflanders518 I had a very early Propel SL, the brake stops were aluminum glued into the carbon, the aluminum corroded and started to detach from the top tube. I drilled out the stops and ran a brake outer direct from the lever to the caliper.
@@neilpassingham7309 Changed the rear brake to a fouriers and ran a full liner internally. Still not great but doesn't stick any more. Ran full shift cable housing from shifter through top tube and out to rear derailleur to get acceptable shifting. Drilled out top tube stop but could route housing past rear cable stop without drilling.
No. 8!
Very bad advice. Please don't drill holes into your frame. Use a liner instead which is like the inner part of a shifting cable without the housing. Costs a few cents and does the same. Done that for 30 years. Thumbs down for this video.
More housing more friction. A dry lube is a good idea better than an oil base lube but don't use ptfe stick with silica
Lubing cables with GT85 / WD40 is not the best idea as it attracts dust and dirt over time. Works great to begin with, but will attract more dirt over time. It a long section, but the inner cable still drags dirt into the cable liner