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Old 06-18-12, 01:09 PM
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gyozadude
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Location: Sunnyvale, California
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Bikes: Bridgestone RB-1, 600, T700, MB-6 w/ Dirt Drops, MB-Zip, Bianchi Limited, Nashbar Hounder

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Cable housing can make a huge difference. I've personally purchased the Walmart Bell cables/housing combo pack on sale and I've tried them only to find out how bad they really are. Without a liner and with very soft housing coils, the actual cable almost immediately grooves the interior and increases friction by a huge amount. And because the coils are soft, they bend easily and form kinks, especially near cable caps.

The whole shifting is aggravated by a bike that has cable clips and no braze-on stops. This forces the entire derailleur cable to endure the friction of 4ft or more of cable run. No wonder the shifting on the back is bad.

Now, your situation might not be as bad. But just swapping cables isn't necessarily going to fix the problem. Swapping cables AND housing, using lined housing, lubing the cables, making sure the cable routing is smooth and continous and not kinked, then overhauling the RD to make sure the springs can overcome the friction when shifting to smaller cogs (i.e. higher gears) can make the shifting seem like night and day.
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