Posts
282
Joined
3/2/2011
Location
San Diego, CA
US
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29th
Edited Date/Time
10/16/2022 11:03pm
It's been several years since internal cable routing was the latest and greatest feature to hit mountain biking. There were a few growing pains along the way, highlighted by excessive rattling and nearly impossible-to-route frame designs that were both (mostly) solved by internally guided routing. Nowadays, it appears most riders just expect frames to feature internal routing and are much more occupied with whether a bike is mixed-wheel compatible or has frame storage.
But do riders really care or want internally routed cables?
I know, the question you've been dying to have answered. But after working at a shop and spending too much time fishing cables through intricate frames, then riding bikes with external cables that are easy to maintain, and finally witnessing the commotion stirred by headset cable routing, I began to wonder if riders really care for internal routing in the first place. I do appreciate the look of a nude frame with cables tucked away inside, but I also know some bikes continue to use external routing and look mighty sexy, too.
Here is my two cents: Mechanical cables can live inside my frame, no problem, as long as they're silent. If there is oil inside the hose, stick that on the outside of my frame, and I'm a happy camper. If oil is in the dropper line, that must not be my bike.
But do riders really care or want internally routed cables?
I know, the question you've been dying to have answered. But after working at a shop and spending too much time fishing cables through intricate frames, then riding bikes with external cables that are easy to maintain, and finally witnessing the commotion stirred by headset cable routing, I began to wonder if riders really care for internal routing in the first place. I do appreciate the look of a nude frame with cables tucked away inside, but I also know some bikes continue to use external routing and look mighty sexy, too.
Here is my two cents: Mechanical cables can live inside my frame, no problem, as long as they're silent. If there is oil inside the hose, stick that on the outside of my frame, and I'm a happy camper. If oil is in the dropper line, that must not be my bike.
Poll
Also, routing cables under the BB needs to stop. Like 10 years ago.
But the industry is going wireless and completely internal for brake hoses. I wouldn't be surprised to see bikes coming out in the near future that don't have any routing for the shifter and dropper.
As a bike shop mechanic, I'm fine with properly routed, internally guided routing that actually improve how the bike works. Yeti, SC, Intense and many other brands have had this for years and it makes for extremely clean, effortless routing, save for Yeti's bullshit dropper routing that pops up in front of the 90 degree corner and catches easy on the frame. There are other brands that offer simple routing that pops out easily and don't take long to sort as well that's not bad. This type of internal routing keeps easy serviceability while keeping cable and housing out of harm's way.
External for cheaper bikes with full length housing is ideal for more.entry lever bikes, routed along the top tube keep things out of most contact points and avoid any severe bends which keep things moving smoothly.
Anything that interferes with basic maintenance, causes parts to wear out before their usual time or causes simple tasks to take hours like replacing a cable needing to remove the entire bar and stem combo and need a complete re-hose and cable of the bike just to add 10mm to a stem or slightly wider bars is bad engineering. Saving 5-10 watts at race pace overall on a production bike is silly at the expense of serviceability is just shitty. On a LeMans car? Or a race moto? Sure, but they don't sell those, they're just trying to make them UCI legal by selling 45 year old's that have a 2.4 watt/kg ftp a nearly non-servicable bike for someone that can't actually take advantage of it's abilities. The amount of people who have bought a "through the headset/stem/bar/some sort of combo" bike and then been floored it costs 200$ to do a stem swap because of the brake hoses, they wish they'd never bought the thing. Now imagine clipping a derailleur cable or brake hose on a road trip.
One of my faves recently was a cervelo that had an over engineered way of routing the brake hoses through the headset and stem.... But had the dropper and shift cable enter the top tube externally. It's obviously set up for electric shifting instead of mechanical, but still....
There's so many internally but open cable in frame frames out there that have an additional internal block that needs to be removed to run a single cable, but both cables have to be removed to take it out, usually meaning both cables need to be replaced and both derailleurs re-tuned for absolutely no reason, a full run of housing and a housing tunnel under the bb would work fine and save time. This is also usually a point of water and dirt ingress that I've seen cause major build up in frames.
Internal routing, guided: fine.
Internal routing, unguided, with large entrance and exit ports: also generally fine.
Internal routing, unguided, with small entrance and exit ports: not fine.
Through the headset: fuck all the way off.
Really surprised companies have not found a clean way to route the cables on ebikes through the battery port (or along the top of the downtube into the motor area) for a best of both worlds internal yet easily accessible solution.
So let's just state broadly: bad cable housing is bad. Manufacturers, please think about the end user when you design your cable housing instead of just slapping it on (or in) there last minute. And please, please, please don't put aesthetics first when you're designing cable routing. It's beautiful if it works.
In many industries/technical products with hydraulic lines, mandatory bleeds to maintain/clean the overall product and/or to manipulate the hydraulic system would be a hard No Go...
For me the minimum (or the maximum depending) is internal guided routing for cables (derailleur, dropper) and the rest is external, or a integrated solution to hide the cables behind a cover with easy access
If I remember correctly, Spec does it that way. And in my experience, it doesn't make it any easier to deal with.
Also, doing a proper fork service, you need to take the fork off the bike, and if you haven't fought putting a steerer tube up a headset with a brake hose through it yet, you don't want to and you likely don't want to pay the extra shops are starting to properly charge for the time it takes to deal with this shit. Also, in these systems, there's very little slack in the cables/hoses so you'll likely need to disconnect something, somewhere to remove the bar/stem from the bike if everything's internally routed. That means again, destination fucked. To service your fork you need full brake bleeds as well. Good luck getting it all back together in the 30mins/1hr it would usually take to do a quick fork service. You're well into 2h+.
Dropper obviously internal.
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