I converted an old Diamondback Sorrento mtb into a singlespeed, b/c it has horizontal dropouts.
The frame doesn't have clearance to run a suspension fork, and I found that riding with no suspension wasn't very comfortable, so I sprang for a suspension stem (no pun intended). The stem is an early-1990's Softride (with parallelogram and coil spring) that I got on eBay and is the same dimensions (150mm extension, 15-degree rise) as the unsprung stem that I'd originally put on the bike.

In the bike's initial build, I'd routed the front brake cable over and around the stem to go into the cable hanger attached to the upper headset race, as shown in this picture (click for larger).



But the Softride stem is much thicker and also flexes downward by design, which makes the front brake cable routing trickier. I'd appreciate feedback on options. 1 and 2 are easiest, 3 and 4 may be optimal but I'm not looking for this bike to be a big-money project.

1. cable over and around the stem as with the original stem. Puts the cable housing at a weird angle entering the cable hanger, but not too bad.




2. cable under the stem. This also puts the cable housing at a weird angle entering the cable hanger, but again not too bad.




3. get a different cable hanger. either one that sits lower or one that attaches to the fork crown.

4. use a v-brake-style noodle to enter the cable hanger. might be a pain to fix up but should work well.