Hi, I'm reconditioning an old road bike as a single speed, and have run into a bit of a snag. I'd like to put new cable/housing on the brakes and have no doubt the cable won't be a problem. The housing, on the other hand, well, its not the same as is used these days. Its much thinner. The braze-on cable stops on the frame look like this, from the side

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With a large hole for the housing on one side and a smaller hole for the cable only on the other side. Is there a source for new housing? Am I stuck on this? Is there another way to get standard cable housing onto this bike? Or, am I stuck with brazing on new cable stops? Thanks for any and all info.

PS: The reason I ask here is because I got funny looks when I asked the guys at the LBS about this. They'd never heard of it.

You probably just need metal sleeves that go over the ends of the cable housings. They're really thin, and should remove the gap. If that doesn't do it for you, you may find the old Campagnolo gray housings (the ones with plastic tube inserts) are the OD required. They're available from some of the vintage parts suppliers, and also on eBay.

There's no gap of any sort. What's on there is actually working fine I just need to replace it with new, if possible.

Sometimes you have to shave some of the outer casing off to make housing fit in older stops.

I think I can facilitate the communication. I don't know where to get the cable housing you're looking for though.

If you were to replace your current cable and housing with new cable and modern housing, the new housing would not fit through the larger opening and rest against the smaller opening as you current arrangement does. Instead, the modern style cable housing would stop when it reaches the larger opening - leaving a gap between where it does end, and where it should end.

From your initial post, it sounded as though you might have already replaced the older cable and housing. If you actually had, the "gap", which is not there now, would be.

Good luck with you small project.

OK it all now makes sense. Thank you :)