Ashen

I have an old mountain bike frame sitting in the garage, seems perfectly sound and its a shame to not use it for anything. The thing is, the cable guides for the rear brakes (and all derailleur cable guides, but I figure if you can do one you can do the other) are smashed, bent, or otherwise gone. Is this something that I can get cheaply replaced or not? This isn't a really high end frame to begin with or anything, but if I can make it usable again for cheap I'd sure like to try.

I know one option is to make it fixed gear and just use a front brake and all the cool kids will like me, but I'm curious about other options as well.

Bikewer

There's not much to a cable guide, so any decent shop should be able to fabricate something from tubing and weld it on, but it's gonna require re-painting.
You can always just run cables full-length and tie 'em down with zip-ties or whatever.... I have done this.

spleck

What's a typical cost to have a cable guide welded on? I have a steel frame designed for cantilever brakes in the rear and I'd rather go v-brake, but there is no rear cable guide, just a tube to turn the wire around the seat post. I'll probably go cable tie route, but it would be nice to have one welded on (paint is not an issue... plenty of chips already).

juicemouse

Don't know about the going rate for the weld job, but the cable guides themselves are readily available from your LBS, if you find a welder. Another option is to go with a clamp-on cable guide, which is also available at the LBS:

https://tinyurl.com/d6xvg