What is this part and can it be replaced?
 

I just obtained an old Raleigh Capri fairly cheap and it's in good shape overall. There is one part that is broken that is preventing the shifters from operating however. I'm not sure what it's called so I took a picture of it.
http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c1...r/IMAG0085.jpg

That is supposed to be one piece of plastic, but it's broken in half. I don't want to upgrade any parts on the bike if possible. Is there a drop in replacement for this part?

You could make one out of a small piece of aluminum, some drill bits, and 10 minutes of free time. Or even make one out of a hunk of plastic.

Making a new one out of aluminum sounds like a good idea. However, if you didn't want to do that you could remove the bolt and use a clamp on cable stop something like this one:

http://store.interlocracing.com/clcast.html

The name of the part is a cable stop or housing stop. Usually they are brazed or welded right on the frame instead of being an add on block like yours. This means that it's not a regular off the shelf part at the bike store so if you shop around you may or may not get lucky in finding a replacement. If you're at all handy with home shop tools I'd suggest that you just make a new one from a small hunk of aluminium or even steel. I wouldn't trust to make it from plastic as the same thing may well happen again depending on what sort of plastic you have or get. The 15 go 20 miniutes it would take to make something identical in metal would be a lot less time than driving or riding around to all the bike stores looking for a replacement.

your best bet is to just find a clampon double housing stop. if you post this over in the C&V ISO threads maybe some flipper who stripped an old Raleigh will have one.

http://www.ebikestop.com/problem_sol...286-BR5454.php

http://www.ebikestop.com//prodimages/BR5454.jpg

^ Agreed now you just have to find a small hunk of metal...

Thanks for the input guys. I'm not sure if I have a piece of metal thick enough to use, but I know I have some tough plastic that is thick enough. I think I'll make one out of that just to get it working temporarily. To get a piece of metal the size I need, I'm sure I'd have to buy a lot of extra, so I think I might just order a clamp on stop as suggested.

My touring bike has a block of Nylon machined to be bolted under the down tube like that.
then I put a cable ferrule in the cable hole thru the nylon..

Just as a follow up, I found a piece of aluminum that was just big enough and successfully made a new part. I installed it and snugged up the shifter cables and now it works fine. Now I just need some practice using friction shifters...