jaymobutterball

Hey everyone I have an older, steel Schwinn Prelude with the cable routing under the bottom bracket. There is no plastic cable guide, only two metal eyelets to keep the cables in place. Does anyone use any lube or anything to keep this area smooth while shifting?

dsbrantjr

You could slide a piece of cable outer housing over the wire; either shift or brake type should work. Although it will take just about forever to wear through the BB shell.

corrado33

This comes up every once in awhile. If I find the metal to metal contact has too much friction, I'll use a piece of housing liner.

Jagwire Black Housing Liner > Components > Cables & Housing > Brake Cables & Housing | Jenson USA

alcjphil

Before plastic cable guides were invented, hundreds of thousands of bicycles were built with that sort of cable guide and they were ridden for millions of miles without issue. Almost any sort of lube would attract road grit and make things worse. I have always questioned the wisdom of routing exposed shift cables under the bottom bracket. Before this was common practice, most bikes routed the cables above the bottom bracket. My 1973 Raleigh Professional had a bracket, manufactured by Campagnolo, that guided the front and rear shift cables above the bottom bracket. Many other bikes of that era had similar brazed on brackets. These brackets were less exposed to road grit, but they all were metal to metal. What has changed with newer bikes is the advent of indexed shifting and in particular higher and higher rear sprocket counts requiring lower friction along the cable run to work properly. So, if your bike has 9,10, or 11 speed shifters this may be an issue. Fewer speeds than that, it may not matter

Slash5

Have you actually used that liner from Jenson? I was looking for liner and from what I could find out, I think that is not liner but the plastic they put on bare cable between cable stops and housing ends on mountain bikes.
I haven't seen it with my own eyes so thought I'd ask.
Only place I found what appears to be real inner was on Ebay - Jagwire Speed Lube Liner, Ultra Slick Lubricant Enhances Performance, Shift 2pcs | eBay

I picked up a bunch of shifter housing odds and ends and just stripped the inner out of them as needed.

corrado33

For my own bikes? Heck no. I use modern housing with liner already in it.

For crappy bikes? Yes. We have housing that requires you put a liner in it. It's basically just a plastic tube, hence why it's so cheap. (Liner is plastic tube, housing is normal.) But the liner for the crappy bike housing makes a great "insulating" liner for BBs or old bikes with metal cable guides. (However most of the time I don't find it necessary.)

rowebr

If you use stainless cables or the newer stainless cables with polymer coating then it should work fine just running the bare cables through the eyelets. Eventually some grit and gunk will build up down there, when it does i just hit it with some WD-40 and scrub with a q-tip.