Couple of bikes I am looking at have internal cable routing.

Good thing. Bad thing?

It’s ok. can be a pain to fit depending on the frame design. Looks nice and neat.

2 designs are:

and…

The Giant one looks a lot neater, but obviously there will be more cable to route through the frame.

air compressor and string seems the fun way to do it !

Get that Giant!

Get that Giant!

Nice, innit? I would be getting the black SLR 2 model, though.

http://www.giant-bicycles.com/go/?c=UK&axid=4015092#specifications

Not in the country till end of September 😡

Never bothered me.

Tie a bit of string to the cables you wish to remove. Remove cables and hope string doesn’t fall off. Reverse process.

Snorted.

Internal can be noisy, depends how it’s been done. Also, yes, it’s fairly easy to do if there’s already a cable in there but it can be a lot harder if there’s not. New frames tend to come prepped for it but not always (and maybe you’ll want to add a cable later, frinstance going from 1×10 to 2x, or addig a dropper post, or something.

Does look good though. Well, sometimes. Got a 224, it just looks silly, big loops of cable in some places, internal (and rattly) in others.

I had a couple of Klein Rascals back in the day, both with internal gear cables and they were a nightmare.
There was just too much friction, making the shifting stiff and needing constant over-shifts and then back to the gear you wanted and the spring in the mech wasn’t strong enough to come down the block – awful. Once you introduced a bit of water and grit it was game over.
You needed to clean the cables out all the time, but it was a faff because (obviously)they ran through the frame. Give me nice slotted guides any day.
The rear brake felt steppy too, once some dirt got into the cable. You could feel it at the lever and hear it crunching.
(Looked tidy though!)

Have they got a different method now (the Kleins had a thin “macaroni” style plastic tube from the outer cable stop to the exit by the BB,)to overcome these issues? I swore I’d never buy a bike / frame with internal cables again, but they seem to be getting more abundant these days.

My Top Fuel has internal routing, and it’s quite nicely done – big ‘hatches’ to get at the cable exit points. Only daft thing is that you have to remove the BB to properly replace the rear mech cable.

Others are a massive PITA though.

My last road bike had internal cable routing and the rattling drove me round the bend, my current old has the traditional routing and is pleasingly silent by comparison.

Mountainbikes on the other hand, are allowed to be a bit rattly so less of an issue, and it does look nicer.