CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Questions/Support/Help

Custom brake cables?

(7 posts)
  • Started 13 years ago by DaveC
  • Latest reply from ASG
  • This topic is not resolved

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  1. DaveC
    Member

    I was at my sister house in Leeds at the weekend. My three neices & nephew's bikes were all in need of repair. I fixed a couple of punctures gave a short lesson on puncture repair to the older two. I had a hard time getting their brakes to work properly. The cables were restricting the braking performance through corrosion. I did try with my lubricant spray and moving the wire through the cable but I ultimately think I'll need to replace the cables. I have no oil with me. Unfortunately the bikes are not common names, and the cable cover/sheath was discontinuous, which means replacing the brack cables is not straight forward.

    Does anyone have any links to cables kits which I could buy online which are customisable please? One cable on my nephews bmx bike goes down a hole in the front handle bar stem and comes out of the forks! I mean these bike makers are not making my job of occassional maintance easy!

    Cheers,

    Dave C

    Posted 13 years ago #

  2. steveo
    Member

    You sure you don't just need to cut the outers to run between the stops?

    Posted 13 years ago #

  3. wingpig
    Member

    Just go for whichever kit which comes with sufficient ferrules to cope with the amount of cut ends of cable outers you'll end up with. I recently bought one Transfil K.ble kit which came with none and a Fibrax kit which had several.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  4. kaputnik
    Moderator

    I've mentioned the Jagwire kits in another post. I've only ever used the combined brake / gear ones, but I think they sell ones for just brakes. However it's good quality stuff and you will pay about £15-20 a bike for each kit. Unless using STIs (where there's a special bit of cable that runs under the tape around the drops), all you need is a sufficient length of housing, enough brake cables and enough housing and cable end caps. And a good set of housing / cable cutters. A decent LBS should be able to sell you these off the peg in a Henry Ford colour range. Those would be perfectly sufficient for kids' bikes.

    You just cut the housing to the required length and pop a cap at each end. With the cables you just trim to required length and pop a cap on the end.

    Don't try putting old cables down new housings. It's very unlikely they'll go down without starting to unwind and damaging the internal lining of the housing.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  5. Smudge
    Member

    The Bike Works, and I'm sure other LBS's will sell brake and gear outer by the metre. Standard inners should be long enough for kids bikes I guess, if not then tandem ones will be :)
    (I had to make up custom lengths for the bar end shifters on my tourer and that's where I got mine)

    Posted 13 years ago #

  6. ASG
    Member

    Easiest thing to do is strip all the old cables off the bike, take a trip to the LBS with cables in hand and ask them to cut new outer cables the same length as the old one's and include any ferrules required. If you are doing multiple bikes, make sure you label which cables are from which bike and where they are positioned on the bike.

    Posted 13 years ago #

  7. ASG
    Member

    The BMX front cable is like that so that you can spin the handlebars round without getting the cables tangled around the frame. For doing "stunts"! The rear brake may have what seems a complicated set up to do the same.

    Posted 13 years ago #

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