Brompton technical documents - I need to vent.
 

I wanted to change my derailleur cable on my 2017 6 speed and I was confused by this document.

https://trade.brompton.com/Uploads/Q...s/ds-cabdr.pdf

The pdf tells me to disconnect the cable at the trigger end first. Then the procedure for removing the cable at the lower end sounded very complicated. In the end, it was simply a matter of unscrewing a 1.5mm hex grub screw at the lower end and pushing the cable out through a hole in the shifter, much like a conventional trigger shifter. If I had known that, I could have saved myself a lot of time.

It's hard to believe Brompton does such a poor job of providing technical documentation. There are glaring gaps and the documents that they do provide are not labelled according to model year.

I guess Brompton really wants you to go to their dealer for service. It's consistent with my frustrating efforts to try to buy a replacement axle for the Sturmey Archer hub.

Who directed you to that doc? It's for the pre-2017 shifters, which are completely different from yours. As you say, removing the cable is very simple on the new bits.

It's the only document on the Brompton site that deals with derailleur cables. There is no mention of module year and no diagram of the shifter body to give you a clue. Just a poor job of documentation overal. Especially for a bike with a lot of proprietary parts.

Maybe a new document is missing. But the old one seems quite thorough. Obviously it's not marked according to model year. How could they have known years ago that they would change shifter type in 2017?

Did you receive this document with a replacement cable you bought from Brompton? They sometimes look antiquated but I found the documentation provided with original parts always helpful.

It's pretty trivial to update either the pdf or the webpage with some reference to model year. I've been in engineering and design for decades and it's pretty much standard operation procedure to index all technical documentation in that manner.

My feeling is that Brompton has really dropped the ball on the tech side since about 2014. There hasn't been a new tech video on their Youtube channel since then although there are plenty of marketing videos.

I did not buy a cable from Brompton. I shortened the original cable after a handlebar swap.

Zen desk
 

Asked, the company directly , yourself? you can do that .

And the diagram shows the old above-bar shifters.

I guess my standards are a little high. I am used to docs that conform to established ISO standards for technical documentation. Yes, at the top of the doc, there is a small 8 point font that says "Dec-11 cab dr ds". If that's a reasonable data field for a tech document, then I retract my criticism. However, I think Brompton could do better by following Shimano's example like the attached.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...82c11bd956.png

I realized today that Bromptons technical documentation page hasn't been updated since November 12, 2012. I guess that should have been my first clue that the document wasn't relevant to my bike.