Overheard a guy at the co-op say internal cable routing is overrated

I was at our local bike co-op last Saturday swapping out a shifter cable on an old Trek, and this older mechanic was telling a newbie that internal cable routing is just a way to sell more parts. He said it makes simple jobs like this one take twice as long and you end up chasing rattles for weeks. Honestly, he had a point because I spent 20 minutes just fishing the new cable through a frame the other day. I get that it looks cleaner, but for a working bike that sees gravel and mud, external cables are way easier to maintain. The newbie asked if there's a trick to avoid the rattle, and the mechanic just laughed and said foam tubing. Has anyone else run into a setup where internal routing made a simple fix into a whole afternoon project?

2 comments

2 Comments

jamies4526d ago

The foam tubing trick works okay but it's really just a band-aid for a design that should have been simpler from the start. I've seen some higher end bikes that use little rubber grommets inside the frame to keep cables quiet, but those dry out and fall off over time. External routing lets you swap a cable in ten minutes flat and never worry about weird noises coming from inside your frame again.

skyler51626d ago

Swapping cables in ten minutes flat is exactly why I refuse to go back to internal routing.