[PRSboy]

I have an Argon18 Nitrogen aero road bike.  I want to replace the gear cable inners and outers, and while I’m at it shorten them as to my mind they are too long; they route in to the top of the top tube near the stem from the handlebars, and among other things I hit my knees on them when I’m out of the saddle which is oddly annoying!

Is there a rule of thumb as to how long a gear cable should be to work effectively, or anything I should look out for?  Presumably I need to watch for curve radii being too tight.

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[PRSboy]

Thanks… they do cross under

Thanks… they do cross under the bars currently (hence the loops which catch my knees!) then both go through a single hole by the stem on the top of the top tube.  I remember fiddling with them and routing them wrong when I replaced the inners.  I have found some suggested lengths in the original assembly instructions and will compare to the existing ones when I strip them out… I’m not convinced the shop built it right as they didnt put the barrel adjusters in for the brakes and rear mech as the instructions recommend.

What I’d really like is a SRAM etap wireless group then I’d not need gear cables at all!  Sadly funds don’t allow… 🙂

[kil0ran]

That’s the main thing – also

That’s the main thing – also have enough slack so you don’t rip the end out of the shifter in a crash (although that depends somewhat on how slammed your bars are and whether the bar end passes through the front triangle)

The order of cables also matters in terms of how and where they cross each other. On road bikes with external routing I always used to cross the cables because it made for a nice radius and therefore cable run. So rear shift cable would go to the cable stop on the non drive side of the head tube. You then uncross them under the downtube (can also do this for internal routing).

[Author]

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