Internal Cable Routing Woes

If there’s one thing that seems to cause more grief than anything else in our bike repair workshop, its internal cables.  Now don’t get me wrong, they look great but often they are just not that well thought out. Just like this Forme cyclocross bike we had through the workshop that needed new cables fitting.

Hmm an innocuous job usually done in 30 mins turned into about 1 hour of trying to figure it out.

Internal Cable Should Not Mean Having To Remove The Bottom Bracket!

Now usually with internal cables the manufacturer has at least thought of the poor mechanic who will have to change the cables at some point.  Often they have outer casing all the way through which makes changing the inners a doddle and the outers can be guided into place by leaving the inner cables in situ (more on this in another post).  With the Forme there was no such luck.  We felt sure there would be an easy way to get the cable in without removing the pressed in bottom bracket.  They’re must be!

Actually there isn’t an easier way, you have to remove the chainset and bottom bracket and thread the cable through a cable guide directly underneath the seat tube inside the bottom bracket shell!

Piece Of Cake

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum is this Giant Trintity TT bike which the customer was complaining wasn’t indexing properly.  Now this bike had more sensible full outer casing internally in the frame, so fitting the cables was a long-winded but easy enough process.

However on inspection of the cables we noticed that a shorter piece of outer casing had been added to the to the length which runs through the frame.  Joined together with plastic ferrules which had disintegrated and some electrical tape.  It probably worked for the first couple of rides, until the gears all went to mush hmmm.