Bottom Bracket Cable Guide Lube
 

Does anyone else have issues of poor shifting it they don't regularly lube the shift cable guides on their bottom bracket? On most bikes, I've never given it much thought, but on my current CX bike (a 10-speed SRAM BTW), the RD will start mis-shifting every hundred miles or so of inclement weather unless I spray some lube on there and clean things up. And sometimes after lubing, I have to adjust cable tensions to get clean indexing again.

http://www.whizmoandgizmo.com/Misc/BottomBracket.jpg

I am doing the "crossover" trick where the shift cables cross each other on the downtube to get less-convoluted housing routing at the handlebars but it is hard for me to believe this makes any difference.

I'm wondering if a different guide might require less attention, perhaps one of a different material.

- Mark

You just have to keep those guides clean... top mounted cables make so much sense on bikes that see a lot of crappy weather.

In some cases a full run of housing can work really well to protect cables from contamination but this does not work on every bike and can sometimes affect indexing.

Pull the liner out of some brake cable housing and use it in the cable guide.

if you have plastic guides like those in the photo, do nothing, it's as low friction as anything you're likely to find, and being open will stay cleaner if kept dry.

For metal liners, a bit of truly dry lube like Moly-disulfide might help a bit, but with plastic, clean and dry will work better than lubed.