I’ll be swapping parts (SRAM force) of my current bike over to a P3C and was hoping to get advice on anything that might make the build process go easier. Overall, I’m pretty handy and do 99.9% of my own wrenching. Just looking to steer clear of hurdles that I may not anticipate.
How do the internal cable stops work? Are they permanatly mounted in the frame? Any tricks for cable routing? BB installation? What about chainline? I’m assuming I can just pull the bb off the current frame and remount it in the same way. What might I be missing?
You’ll use caps on your cable housings where they enter the frame. The cables run bare inside the frame. The derailleur cables will come through a hole near the bottom of the bottom bracket. Once you push them down there, use a large paperclip straightened except for a small hook on the end to pull them out through the hole. DON’T FORGET TO ROUTE THEM THROUGH THE PLASTIC CABLE GUIDE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM BRACKET AREA BEFORE YOU RUN THEM TO THE DERAILLEURS!
One of the most frustrating thing is getting the front derailleur cable back through the frame to where it needs to exit on the seat tube. I use a straightened piece of coat hanger that I push down through the top hole until it exits at the bottom. I carefully tape the cable to the coat hanger and gingerly pull it back up. You have to do this carefully or the tape and cable can easily come off of the coat hanger and the tape can become a permanent part of your frame’s insides.
The rear brake cable is easy to run and is pretty much a repeat of the above. Cap your cable housing, run your cable bare through the frame. Pull it out with the paper clip. Don’t lose the plastic cable stop that goes in the bottom of the top tube. You’ll be golden.
It’s all pretty easy. It’s just that one front derailleur run through the seat tube that’s a mild pain in the butt.
Very helpful technique I found for internal cable routing. I once accidentally lost the internal helper tubing that came with the frame and spent a week thinking about how to make it easy to solve the problem. I came up with this:
I used electrical tape to tape a small rare-earth magnet to the end of the inner cable and fed it in. I knew how far to push the cable down the downtube to put the end with the magnet near the exit hole.
Now I had something thin like a coat hanger with another small rare earth magnet taped to the end and stuck it inside the outbound hole. The 2 magnets instantly become inseparable and you can pull the end of the cable out the hole without any fuss.
One of the most frustrating thing is getting the front derailleur cable back through the frame to where it needs to exit on the seat tube. I use a straightened piece of coat hanger that I push down through the top hole until it exits at the bottom. I carefully tape the cable to the coat hanger and gingerly pull it back up. You have to do this carefully or the tape and cable can easily come off of the coat hanger and the tape can become a permanent part of your frame’s insides.
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i use a piece of nokon cable housing liner- probably about 4-5 inches (enough to go from slightly above bottom hole of frame/bottom bracket area to 1 cm above exit point/hole just below front derailleur area. shifts flawlessly and takes 3 seconds to thread. keep the coat hanger for the shop apron
