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cable and housing...
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Hi
I am (re) building my bike and looking in cables and housing. What are you using at the moment, satisfaction, price, ...?

I have been using SRAM gore ride for a few years now, but they are expensive. I used to run full length inner liner so the shift cable never see dirt, and ordinary SRAM housing for brakes as they are less exposed to elements.

typically +120$
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Re: cable and housing... [zambony] [ In reply to ]
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standard stainless cables with bulk lined housing, nothing fancy. works fine, no issues with shifting or braking, ever. Dunno what it cost, but $120 would do my bike several times.

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Re: cable and housing... [zambony] [ In reply to ]
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I use Shimano Dura-Ace BC-9000 cables for brakes and whatever their equivalent was for derailleurs. I experimented with a few others, and this gave me the best performance for my rear brake. The front brake run was so short and straight that any cable would be fine (but I am a sucker for Shimano's marketing around their polymer coatings). I don't think cables matter that much for performance of the derailleurs, at least I do not recall noticing any differences, and now I am all electronic.
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Re: cable and housing... [zambony] [ In reply to ]
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I think it depends on what type of elements you ride in and how exposed your cables are. I've had standard bulk box type cables and housing work perfectly fine for me for thousands of miles on my TT bike that didn't usually get used in the rain, and the cables are internally routed. But for my old CAAD10 that had external routing and exposed cables below the down tube, I say that shifting performance degraded after about 2-3000 miles. I attributed this to all the dirt and gunk that gets kicked up by the front wheel while riding in rain that gets on the exposed cable under the down tube, and pushed into the housing. I tried higher quality cables and housing, and they didn't seem to last much longer to justify the increase in price. So with cheap cables, it usually meant swapping shift cables 2-3x per year, and housing and brake cables once per year for 8-10k miles per year riding on that bike. Not that big a deal since the cables were so cheap, and external routing is super easy. It cost me about $40 to swap cables and housing on that bike annually, and maybe about 10-15 minutes per shift cable swap, and 45 min for the full housing swap which includes doing new bar tape.

My new road bike is a 2018 R5...and it has the shifting cables enter the frame just behind the stem on the top tube. Which is dumb, because even though none of the cable is exposed externally, where the housing enters the top tube is where all my sweat drips...and I'm a heavy sweater in a humid area. I had the original Shimano cables that the bike came with and I went a full year with perfect shifting, but decided to swap the cables and housings just because 1 year seemed like a long time for me (about 7k miles). Decided to go with cheaper cables and within 6 weeks shifting performance sucked really bad. When I pulled the cables out, they were completely orange in that section where the cable entered the top tube because they lacked that coating that more expensive Shimano cables come with. So it's back to more expensive shift cables for me on that bike. Cheap brake cables still work fine since I don't sweat on them, and the cheap housing is also fine since more expensive housing isn't going to prevent corrosion on the cable. In the long run the more expensive shift cables will probably end up being cheaper, improve performance, and save a lot of time and hassle from dealing with internal cable replacement over and over again.
Last edited by: Jason N: Dec 9, 19 10:24
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Re: cable and housing... [zambony] [ In reply to ]
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Lined housing and coated cables work well for me. I get the cheapest I can find, with the caveat that the cables are stainless.

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Re: cable and housing... [zambony] [ In reply to ]
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Depends on what you are looking for.

For absolutely the best shifting possible, Shimano Dura-Ace. Marginal gains, etc. But most reviews say they are the best, at least at first. They won't last any longer than other cables, especially in bad conditions.

For great shifting quality at a lower cost, bulk Jagwire. Lower cost but good quality. Fine if you don't mind, or plan on, changing more often for the best performance.

If you ride in poor conditions often, or don't want to have to change as often, the sealed options work best. IIRC, Gore RideOn was made by Jagwire, and now Jagwire has it's own version. The Jagwire is probably a little cheaper than Gore, which I find hard to find now.
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