I'm about to replace the brake cabling and housing for wife's newly acquired bike. However, her neck has been sore, and I think I may be getting a higher stem for her, and raising the handlebars in the future.

Any way to set things up so that I'll be able to raise things without installing new cabling in the future? IOW, how much extra housing (how much of a bowed out cable) is acceptable?

I'm guessing I might raise it 3-4 inches.

Thanks,

If you raise the stem 3 or 4 inches you will definitely have to lenghten the cables unless they already have extra length. The question is how much.

If it was my bike I think that I'd wait until I raised the stem to recable the bike. That way I'd be sure of getting it exactly right. If for some reason you don't want to wait that long, I'd give myself about 3 inches of extra length.

Unless the brake cable is terrible, I'd leave it alone until you replace the stem and/or handlebars. If it's really that bad and needs replacing now, then just put the extra 3-4inches of housing on there; it should be fiine, if not just a little goofy-looking.

My dad is getting into biking around town so we got him an older, rigid MTB. His neck bothers him and the handlebars were too low. He installed bar ends and had them pointing up and slightly back to ride on the majority of the time on (I couldn't stand that). We ended up ordering:
A stem raiser: https://www.nashbar.com/profile.cfm?c...All%20Products (it was on sale for ~$18) and
4" rise handlebars: https://www.nashbar.com/profile.cfm?c...B%20Handlebars
which got the bars up about 6", about as high as the bar ends were (which were not put back on).