I am currently rebuilding my red LeJeune and want some suggestions on cable housing color. Yeah, I know, no brainer...red. But therein is the problem. I cannot find a red that I like with the bike. I had purchased some cable years ago thinking I would use it, but it is more a ruby red and just does not look right. I got some more cable from Velo Orange...it looked prefect on the monitor, but it is just not right in real life. I should know better than to match a color based on a PC monitor. The reds I find have too much orange in them for my tastes. I have yet to find any gold cable housing and don't really know if I like the idea. What I am considering now is using some stainless cable. Anyone have any other ideas? Some color to contrast and if so, what color? Hit the link in my sig and go to the LeJeune folder if you need to see the frame for inspiration.

The Baron has 36' of the stainless steel housing on ebay. If it goes at that price ($2.99) it is a great deal. He also sometimes refers to himself in the third person, it's annoying but I have only had good dealings with him.

https://cgi.ebay.com/STAINLESS-STEEL-...QQcmdZViewItem

if you can find it, the red/gold/yellow cable housing that is kinda transparent, so you can see the coiled cable would probably look nice. Yellow jersey might have some, i bet if it isn't listed they might be able to find some for you.

https://www.yellowjersey.org/cabl.html

As I recall, LeJeune used blue with the red as a secondary color, like the headtube? (at least the one I had, but it was a track bike) So blue, gray or white. Or black.

edit:
Just looked at the pics, dang, thats NICE! Yeah, light blue or white!

Owning LeJeunes, I understand the problem.

In the old days one just compared the various cable housings at the bike shop and decided.

Many reds in the housing world today are too blue, too dark essentially.

So, on one I use white

On another, I use original red as I have scavanged useful sections from the others.

On a third I use silver

On a forth... well it is one of the blue ones, so it will get silver as well.

Some of this depends on the bar tape...

Back when I raced it was FRESH white every week for the race, today it is red, as it hides use well.

On that blue bike though...white will probably be best visually as LeJeune blue is not a good match with the tape today.

Lynn,

I'm planning to run red cable on my Kool Lemon Varsity so I could take some of your extra red off your hands. I wonder if yellow cable will look good on a red bike? Scooper's yellow Paramount was my inspiration for the Varsity. Let me know if you want to part with some red housing.

Lynn, I'd go with stainless as a first choice. It's neutral and won't really clash with anything. Second would be blue as dbakl suggests. Third choice is get some vinyl dye at the auto parts store and make 'em whatever color you can get away with.

yellow.

Red and yellow looks really good to me.
(but then I'm chromatically challenged)
marty

gold would look cool if you could find it..
the decals have blue and white in them.. i think either of those would b nice
in fact, red would be my last choice, as there's so much of it everywhere else !

Dang...I was hoping I was being too narrow minded, but you all have come up with what I have considered before posting. I looked at Yellow Jersey before...they have been sold out of the red Casiraghi for a while. It looks like there may be a gold, but I really don't want to spend $25 to find out I don't like it. The only blue on the bike is the markings, so I think that is out. Yellow....not on this bike. Have it on two others and it looks great. I just don't think silver would look good. So I guess I am back to the stainless cable, which I do have already. Thought about shooting it with gold paint, but in a test, it flaked off after a few days and some flexing. I am probably going to put red shrink tubing on it where it might abraid the paint. I'm in no hurry on this, so I will probably experiment.

Thanks for all the input.

What color bar wrap are you going to use?

Probably red. But I do have some wrap on my blue LeJeune that starts blue and turns red above the brake levers. If I can find it again, I may go that route. Hmmm. If I do that, blue cabling becomes more of a possibility.

Here is a tease of what is going on....

Natural cork bar wrap would look good on it too.

I had a similar problem matching my metallic almost-candy burgundy paint, so I went with white, which I think looks great. Otherwise, try to find a blue to match the decal work. Nice-looking bike; circa 1973 two of my coworkers at Bikecology bought new LeJeunes and seemed to be delighted with them. I remember watching them slogging up the hills of the Santa Monica mountains with their stock 52-42/14-22 gearing.

I am a bit less happy with the color of my water bottle holders, which in hindsight would have matched the original candy apple red pretty well.

Lynn,

I think that either stainless, yellow, white or blue (I don't think the blue necessarily would need to match the bike's paint accents) would look good on that bike. The bike looks marvellous btw.

Why not ask for a sample? Send a SASE to them in the real mail, I bet if all it took was to snip a small section and send it, they would.

Unfortunately the Casiraghi cable that caught my eye is not bulk.

I'm with the folks who suggested picking up either the white or the light blue in the decals. Makes it kind of a unified whole.

If neither of those does it for you, I'd say the stainless you have, or standard gray or even black - those all kind of disappear. I mean, you know they are there, but they do not stand out for good or for ill.

They have a storefront? yes? well if they use some on a customers bike I bet they will have a small section left over. Whenever I have done something like this and made it easy for the person(s) on the other end, results happen.

Or, buy the stuff, if it is not right, ebay it, now your gamble is at least partly, maybe even full recouped, never know on the 'bay...

Just finished corresponding with Andrew. He is sending a sample of the Torelli red. What I thought was gold in the Casiraghi is bronze.

Jagwire makes a braded Gold(with clear covering)