I need some plain grey brake cable housing for my Frejus Tour de France. It doesn't need to be totally period correct, but I'd like it to look pretty ok. My usual go-to source for this sort of thing is Porkchop BMX, but the description in this case suggests the grey cable they have is more silver than grey. (It looks pretty grey to me, but kinda dark.) Any other sources where I can buy something by the foot which might look a bit better (not as dark, and not "silver")?

My grey housings oem dura ace cable housing. I believe they are all grey. If not dura ace, Im sure there are abundance of grey housings out there. Go google.

Jagwire makes some nice grey housing (Ice grey)-used some on my Motobecane Grand Touring rebuild this year and like the look

Thanks, yeah. I already whacked the Google mole on the head. That's one reason I came here. Porkchop calls their grey "silver", but it didn't look silver to me, and it did look at bit dark. Colors on the net aren't always what they seem. @due route's response suggests my initial assessment of what Porkchop sells isn't too far off. Searching Google for "gray brake cable housing" yields an Jagwire hit on Amazon as the first result. The description is for "ice gray" (whatever that is), but the picture pretty clearly looks "black" to me. [MENTION=231285]ryansu[/MENTION] confirms that the housing is, indeed, grey, not black.

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Great question Skip!

Grey or silver-grey was by far the most common cable casing colour for Italian bicycle manufacturers in the 1950's and 1960's. Likely because it is what was the default colour coming from the makers of brakesets.

I do not know which manufacturer supplied the casing on your bicycle's Giovanni Galli S.p.A. Balilla brakeset.

One possibility is Transmiflex as they were active at this epoch.

For readers who have not seen, or do not recall, the Frejus here is the "as found" gallery -

https://www.flickr.com/photos/497053...7686279443084/

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^^^ Yep. Grey was the default color. Into the 70s too. Campy brakes came with grey housing. People were not that matchy-matchy BITD. Saddles were black. Housing was grey, at least much of the time. Sometimes when I see vintage bikes with red or yellow housing, it kind of ruins the vintage vibe for me. It's true that some people used colored housing, of course. I can only speak from personal experience from the late 70s on.

Thank you. Pretty pricey though, even without shipping from Japan.

I'll give you 6 feet of this for nothing, if you are interested


Cable Housing by iabisdb, on Flickr.

Thanks [MENTION=57649]iab[/MENTION]. Can I buy you lunch at Taqueria Las Cumbres?

Are you going to Peter's ride this weekend? My back may allow it.

Unaware of a ride this weekend, so quite unlikely...

OP -Here is how the Jagwire housing looks on my 78 Motobecane Grand touring in Champagne


IMG_3889 by Ryan Surface, on Flickr