Originally Posted by
Maelochs
(Really, did you think a bike cable generated the same heat as a car's wheel bearing?) Maybe just too much grease collected too much dust.
The grease was what I had on hand, and it was so thin that I couldn't actually see it. As I pointed out earlier, we used to grease or oil our cables on bikes because it was recommended, but that was fifty years ago and it caused no problems. I also used Vaseline to grease a cable, and that caused no problems, either. That's why I greased this cable. Don't the housing end caps keep dust out? If they don't, then it means the dust entered either through the end cap at the shifter end or at the derailleur end, and then work its way through the whole length of the cable.
I wouldn't "smear" grease all along the length of a cable ... too much area to attract and bind dust.
Neither would I, now.
I have never heard of grease making the inside of a lined cable swell ... but maybe you are the first to discover this.
Neither had I. And I may very well be the first one.
However, so far that hypothesis is unproven. Did you try cutting open the cable at various points to look for signs of swelling?
And will remain unproven. It's just something I suspect, not something I know. To prove it, I'd need to hire somebody with a degree in chemistry to examine it, and that would cost me mucho bucks which I don't have.
And, no, I didn't cut it open. The thing is, after three months of use, with no problems at all, the housing began gripping the cable, causing a slight delay before the derailleur moved the chain to the next cog. The delay was slight but noticeable, especially as I have another bike to compare it with that didn't have a greased cable and wasn't giving me any problems. If the grease was, indeed, clogging it up, why didn't it do that for the first three months of use?
If the inner lining did indeed swell, it would have been so slight, just enough to impede the cable movement, that it wouldn't have been observable to the naked eye.
You might have discovered something we would all like to know.
Well, everyone should know not to grease a cable unless it is specified, but they don't. I learned this after the fact. Had I known it when I installed the cable, I wouldn't have greased it. We won't know whether the inner housing lining was affected by the grease or not. I wrote the OP for the sake of others like myself, who are learning (as I had mentioned), in the hope they won't make the same mistake when they replace a cable.