How much attention do you give your cables?

mastersong

Here's a question - who out there cleans their gear cables on a regular basis and what techniques do you use. How often do you change the inner and/or outer cables. Are there any cables that improve shifting generally.

Reason for asking - I had a lot of problems with shifting at the rear, even the shop didn't improve it. I changed the inner, re set it and it worked fine for about 4 rides but now its crap again. I really don't want to have to keep fiddling with it though.

Thanks

Hecubus

Well to give you an idea pro riders get new cables and housing about every 2 weeks.
I personally change them about anywhere between 3 to 4 months depending on how much use the bike has had and how wet it has been. Sometimes I'll remove them and regrease the cables in between if I feel shifting getting heavy. Cables realistically don't shift well or smoothly for that long. The cable eventually scrapes away at the slipery inside lining of the housing along the bends and pressure points making it slide less smoothly. I've found that overall standard shimano SIS housing and their teflon coated cables seem to have the best shifting performance overall. If you don't get the sets that already come pregreased remember to squirt in some inside the cable ends as you cut them or along the lengh of the cable.

cachehiker

I scrub the inner and relube the loop off of the stay using Dumonde Liquid Grease with every tune-up. I've been using Dumonde Lite on the rest of the cableset.

I recently noticed a significant difference replacing a shifter cable that was only 14 months old. I've also had good luck just replacing the inner with the basic QBP die-extruded wire.

I'm also needing to do some shifter cable work on my mountain bike. I'm tempted to redo it all with an XTR cableset. Can I do better for the money? Any thoughts?

__________________
Bri
1,000,000 bicycles = 2 megacycles

mastersong

Thanks - bought a set of SIS cables which fixed the problem but even though they were pre-cut, I had to cut them to fit and ended up with much waste. Can you get SIS housing in one long length to cut yourself?

boudreaux

Yep.Many LBS have both Shimano and generic by the foot. www.loosescrews.com also has it