I’m replacing the cables and housing on my wife’s 2010 Quintana Roo Dulce for the first time (I know they say do it every year but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it) and the front derailleur cable housing won’t come out. It won’t budge an inch, I already pulled the old cable out without any problems but the housing has me stumped. It doesn’t appear to be routed through the BB or anything, and I replaced that recently and don’t remember anything visible down there so I don’t believe that has anything to do with it. Anyone have any experience like this or tips to proceed?
only tips i have are:
- be sure you removed the possibly sweat welded on housing end by the der side
and if that isn’t there
- try pulling it out the opposite direction as it may be possible the housing has been nicked/cut by the entry/exit from turning of bars moving housing aound. if that is the case it can get stuck possibly(it did on a felt i had once).
if that is not the case either, i can’t help
Magnets, patience, and a few swigs of liquor of your choice.
The proper way to do this next time is to use the old cables and housings as guides to pull through the new ones. And yes, if you’ve been thinking, for cables this would require you to sever the knob from rest of the cable.
Then use electric tape to attach the old and the new.
That said, it sounds like your bike is fully lined through the tubes as opposed to having the housing stop at a cable stop on the head tube or down tube. In which case, you may get betterresults by feeding the housing inthe reverse direction from BB to the front.
Yeah, with the other ones I fed a string back through to get things lined up right and I had planned to do that here, alas that isn’t my problem. The cable housing goes all the way through the bike, but for the front derailleur cable it (the housing) doesn’t actually exit the frame down by the FD. There is just a tiny hole big enough for the cable to stick out. I imagine the housing stops just on the other side of the carbon, but it looks like it probably has to make a “J” hook down there to feed the cable in the right direction. I’m wondering if the bend has it caught somehow preventing me from getting the housing out. I have no idea how to get it un-stuck, I have tried pulling mildly with pliers for better grip, but I don’t want to ruin anything by pulling too hard.
I have a plan to re-install the new housing once I get the old stuff out, I fed the new gear cable backwards through the old housing, when I can get it out I will pull the housing through, then feed the new stuff onto the backwards-fed cable to set it in place, then pull the cable through and reverse it to sit properly. It should work like a charm.
It should work like a charm.
I think that’s what the CIA said about the Bay of Pigs!
I feel your pain. I recently re-cabled my Felt AR, and before I took out the old cable I went on the Interwebs and found a couple of different people say that you didn’t have to worry about pulling the housing and cable out all at once because the internal guides were so good. So I promptly pulled it all out.* And promptly learned there were no guides at all in mine. Cue several days of profanity, drinking, odd jerry rigged j-hook and magnets, and a slow Colonel Kurtz-style descent into madness. Finally figured it all out.
- It wasn’t prompt. I had the same problem as you with a seriously stuck housing, only at the front entry point just behind the head tube. The housing had cracked all the way to the steel coil just inside the frame in a way just perfectly oriented as a locking mechanism against pull the housing out. Pulling the other direction wasn’t much better for reasons I can’t remember. I got it out just through using lubricants and tiny instruments to squeeze the broken housing as it came out the hole. And a lot of profanity. It finally just popped out.
It was all worth it though. My new cabling has everything working better than it ever did from the LBS installation.
If nothing else has worked then you’re probably going to have to pull the crank and bottom bracket to take a look.
Yeah, I guess I will have to try that to make sure. It isn’t hard but every minute is hard to come by if you know what I mean. Thanks for the help guys.