I just bought and installed a set of Jagwire Ripcord cable and
housings for simple reason they were orange...
I've decided to dust off my 25 year old Ritchey touring frame. I
bought a honey Lepper Voyager saddle a couple years back (yes I know,
you don't buy a Voyager, you rent it, but the price was right) and
this year I replaced my venerable, racy and creaky Cinelli bars and
stem with a gentleman's extended stem Nitto setup, with Velo-Orange's
honey stitch-on elk skin bar wrap. Have got that done, I stepped
back, looked at the dark blue frame, and said, "What this bike needs
is orange cables!"
That proved to be more difficult than it might seem, except that
Jagwire offers an orange set in their Ripcord range. It was more than
I thought was right for wires and housing (living in the past retro-
grouch-wise) but I knew the alternative, scrounging around, trial and
error, would cost almost as much and consume more time.
Anyway, they arrived yesterday, and, not wanting to have to repurchase
anything, I spent a long time carefully sizing, cutting, and finishing
housing, adjusting ferrules, and clipping, heat shrinking, and capping
wires. When I got to the brakes, I was startled to realize they were
longitudily bundled cable wrapped, just like the derailleur cables. A
quick check on the web revealed that was how they were supposed to be,
with a kelvar casing that kept it all together.
I put on the back brake cable, made it through the tricky straddle
cable anchor adjustment (the brakes are cantilevers), tightened
everything up, and gave the lever a good squeeze.
WOW.
It was like hitting the rim with a hammer. I really wasn't expecting
that much reduction in mush. The front brake was similar, although
with less housing, it wasn't as noticible. And while I do need to try
it out on the road, I must say it's the first new-fangled stuff that's
impressed me in quite a while...
(Only irritation is that my inline cable adjusters, which I'm pretty
sure are Jagwires, have a odd i.d. on one end, which doesn't work well
with their ferrules.)