I have been looking into cables and housing.

The holy grail of housing, apparently, is a) incompressible b) flexible c) attractive d) reasonably priced e) durable f) light.

There is your generic bulk housing. Your nice Jagwire sets. The OEM cable sets like Campagnolo's kit. Yokozuna Reaction. The segmented aluminum or ceramic housing, like Alligator and Nokon And some ultra light housing like Bungarus. Vintage stuff like CLB aluminum housing. The cool bare metal spring-like housing that I can't find anywhere.

The holy grail of cables, apparently, is a) unstretching b) durable c) reasonably priced.

There is old school galvanized steel. Nice stainless steel. Telfon coated. PowerCordz Zylon cables (75% lighter than steel! Comes in colors!). And even titanium cables (50% the weight of steel! Pretty gold color!).

What are the advantages and disadvantages? Yokozuna is supposedly rather inflexible. The segmented housing can be fiddly and may kink. PowerCordz may not like being reclamped. Galvanized just sucks (IMO).

Let's discuss. And, acknowledge that your basic stainless steel cables in bulk housing work fine for 99% of bikes and riders, but also that the 1% who want more - well, the 1% are people too. Have mercy on them. Help them find the holy grail of cables and housing.

71 views and no responses - seems the 1% will have to wait. I don't know that basic cables and bulk housing will satisfy 99% on this forum, but the most popular alternatives are well-known, and the more esoteric ones are - esoteric.

I use die-drawn stainless inner wires in lined outer housings, like the offerings from Shimano and Jagwire, replace inners and outers together when warranted and call it good.

My holy grail for both cables and housing is a product which performs without me thinking about it for a price that allows me to change both cables and housing on flips without making the cost go up much.

Sunlite stainless cables work perfectly fine for my needs, both on bikes to sell and our keep fleet and they cost $1.5/cable from the local collective.
I have Jagwire shift housing in bulk(the kind with some green junk in the liner) and Sunlite brake housing in bulk in my garage. $1/foot is what I use for a cost estimate and thats actually high.


This setup shifts and brakes great on everything from 80s and 90s road bikes and mountain bikes to a modern Trek Madone 3.1 and modern Cdale Synapse.

Again, this is my needs though. I dont race. I dont push to lighten the bike at the expense of a much lighter wallet.

I buy Jagwire lined brake and shift housing in 25' coils which makes it only slightly more expensive then generic housing but both cheaper and more versatile than pre-made cable kits. These packages even include a handful of end ferrules so you don't have to buy them separately.

I buy Jagwire or Shimano stainless steel die drawn cables. Back when I had bikes with both Shimano and Campy drivetrains, I bought double ended shift cables so they could be used with either one. I had to buy separate Shimano and Campy brake cables and, no, they are not interchangeable with out some filing on the Shimano cables to make the ends smaller. Now everything is Shimano which has simplified my inventory.

Am currently using a Yokozuna kit for Campy on the Ridley and an older Shimano kit on the Orbea. I agree that the Yokozuna brake cables are pretty stiff. Stiff enough that they slightly restrict the turning of the front wheel. But not enough to be a problem once they are in use for a bit. They are more pricey as expected but I do like they way they proform. For next time, I'd prolly do what [MENTION=38165]HillRider[/MENTION] did and buy the Jagwire in bulk. Seems to make sense and would same some $$. In the past, I didn't really care and bought generic cable housings with teflon liners for the brakes and whatever stiff housing was around for the rear derailleur. To each their own.

I find Jagwire cables and housings to be acceptable.

Nokon tube and bead housing is machined aluminum segments over a slick teflon-plastic sleeve..

Cheaper? Not really .. but it is lighter, flexible and not much compressible ..



There was aluminum coiled wire housing BITD .. friction shifting dark ages..

I also buy the 25 foot rolls of Jagwire housing, and use Campagnolo cables or equivalent.

I've used Shimano stainless, PTFE and now polymer coated. They all shifted the bike adequately I would say. However, it's difficult to compare them as I have not tried them on the same bike (my 105 bike is PTFE, Ultegra Polymer, my steel cable is an old MTB). I will say that the polymer tends to flake off and look ugly on the exposed cables. PTFE seems to scrape off and gum up the works if you're not careful. Stainless seems to have the least issues. If I were in the market for a completely new cableset right now, I'd probably be looking at the super highly polished stainless Jagwire cables, as I'm not convinced that the coated cables upsides outweigh their downsides.

Road Brake Inner Wires - Elite Ultra-Slick | Jagwire

A little off topic but not entirely - I have a bike set up with in-line CX levers and a Mafac Racer front brake. I am using an ordinary headset cable stop ala mediocre bikes of the '70s. Problem is that the turn from the handlebar to the stop is very tight and there is a lot of friction and loss of brake feel. Far from dangerous but not ideal. Do you guys (gals) have any ideas for a better way to run the cable housing? (I used to like the bent brass pipe that sat in a black stop but I haven't seen one of those for many years.)

Thanks, Ben

Housing and cable from Shimano, Campy, SRAM and Jagwire are all work very well.

I use Shimano DA/Ultegra grade housing with Jagwire SS inner wires on all my 10spd bikes and the same only with Polymer on my 11 speed bike.

Any "better" cable is boutique and for owners that want to spend more for possible weight savings or bling factor. I don't think it offers significant improvement in functionality.

Again a bit OT but a warning for those who use coated cables. Be sure to scrape ALL of the coating off of the cable where it is clamped by the brake or derailleur pinch bolts. I had a coated rear shift cable on one bike and was sure the pinch bolt would hold it in place. It didn't and the bike began to shift oddly, then almost not at all on a ride a couple of days later. When I got home I discovered the cable had slipped noticeably in the pinch bolt. Scrapping a couple of inches of the cable bare and reclamping it permanently solved the problem. I haven't seen coated brake cables but they could be far more dangerous if not cleaned off before clamping.

I've only seen in person one bike with the segmented bead housing. Not sure what brand. One thing that was weird, was that the housings didn't seem to hold a particular shape, you could push it into a shape with your fingers and it would stay there. So instead of a smooth curve, the housing had slight kinks and straight runs. Is that typical?

In theory, I like the idea of being able to reuse the segments, to add and remove segments to change housing length, move it from bike to bike, just replace the lining. But the odd kinked curves bothered me.

Is the Yokozuna Reaction housing too stiff to easily use for the RD loop?

the minimal compression indexed shifting housing are relatively stiff due to being a bundle of wires on their ends.

Common is to use a longer RD loop to make the curve radius larger to reduce drag on the cable..


Yokozuna is a brand name of Merry Sales Imports , PDX obviously has shops with a Merry sales dealer account.

I have no access to that exclusive brand names source .. My LBS buys Brake and Indexed shifter housing In Bulk. from someone else .

Shimano/Campagnolo are good enough for me.

I stopped using in-line CX levers because of how much the cable routing problems degraded braking performance. It's my understanding that you can improve it a bit by running the cable back over and behind the handlebars to the brake hanger, but that's ugly. I think I have one of the bent pipe's you described somewhere in my garage, but I always felt like that was part of the friction problem. What I'd really like is a pulley similar to a Problem Solvers Travel Agent (but without the ratio changing dual cylinder) that fits in that spot with an adjustable entry angle.

I also like Jagwire bulk rolls. I guess it makes the average cost lower, but my primary reason for buying it is that I like to always have spare housing on hand. It seems to increase the chances that I'll stop putting off re-cabling one of my bikes when it needs it. I use the L3 shift housing. I have most of a roll of their standard brake cable housing, but I've been using the "Pro" compressionless brake housing (what they used to call Ripcord) on most of my bikes for the last year or so. I first started using this with mechanical disc brakes, but I tried it with cantilevers and it made a big difference there too so now I intend to use it on any bike where I really care about the braking performance (except of course the one with hydraulic discs).

I use mostly Jagwire slick stainless steel cables, but I'm not so dedicated to them that I won't use something else if the LBS doesn't have them in stock when I want to buy some. I tried the teflon coated cables a few years ago, but like dr_lha I was put off by how much of the coating scrapes off and turns into grit on the cable. I usually avoid the low-end "basic" cables because I figure if I can feel the difference in friction with my insensitive fingers then it probably makes a real world performance difference.

I know, I like that old-school stuff too, I think it looks cool and seems to be happier to curve for an RD bend. Maybe 'spring-like' also means 'not compressionless' so it doesn't perform well for tighter spacings of >>5 cogs?

Try using a V-brake noodle to turn the tight corner. They are made in 90 and 135 degree flavors and can be had with a handy barrel adjuster.

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...on all my better builds, I use artisanal cables and housing. They're hand braided by the same small children who knot rugs in war torn countries in the Middle East.

...if the stop is one of those things that goes in the headset stack, with a small dropped extension for the stop, they come in a variety of drop lengths. If yours is short, you might be able to scare up a longer one.

Anyone know where to get that "coil spring" housing?

The other housing I like is the gray stuff with a sort of shiny, translucent covering. Actually the Yokozuna Reaction housing looks a little like that.

ebay.
Its old SunTour housing that seems to have been used (only?)on bikes with their barcons. Its friction only.

VO Metallic Braid Derailleur Cable Kits - Cables - Shifting - Components
This is a sort of similar look, but on modern housing.