As per my other thread, I’ve been having a hard time getting shifting sorted on my Planet X XLS. I’ve managed to work around the silly cable routing from the shifters using a short section of brake outer under the bar tape and it’s much better but it’s still not great.

The next culprit seems to be the internal cable runs which add more than their fair share of friction. These appear to be bits of outer bonded into the frame, and I’m quite tempted to just drill them out and just run a continuous section of outer through the frame. If I bypass the internal route using a single section of outer from the bars to the seat stay stop, I can get decent shifting. It’d also mean I could do the sensible routing of having the RD cable come in on the left and out on the right.

Has anyone done this? Are there any downsides?

Bit late to the party but the only way I could get decent shifting on my XLS was 20 quid polymer inners and xtr outer cables. The internal runs didn’t seem to be the problem in my case.

Just for info, I don’t have any shifting issues. Sram Rival 22

Are the brakes mechanical or hydro?

There was issues on earlier shifters, if you look under the caliper there is a code,drop me an email with it and can let you know if its a batch that was affected

Mechanical, so I have better routing than you seem to. Was just commenting for balance, that poor shifting isn’t inevitable with this bike. My cables are just any cheap ones that happen to be in sale at the time

Sure – I suspect the issue is that the friction adds up. So poor routing from the shifters + quite draggy internal runs = problems, where one or other on its own might be OK. If I run a cable from the shifter to the internal run but don’t tie it back to the bars, that works OK.

swampi – thanks, will take a look.

swampi – can’t see your email, but the shifters have a couple of those little stamped dials with a manufacture date of 3/15 and the letter B.

Looks like yours are not from the original batch that had shifting issues,my xls ran Shimano and I always thought the cabling had a lot of friction in the rear shifter, this is the sram info

16T5

16 is week 16 of the year

T is Taiwan production

5 is 2015

So if your brake was manufactured BEFORE that date it could be affected and SRAM will replace under warranty.

Not sure if they will be he same but I’ve just converted an rt58carbon frame for di2, turns out the internal routing was a small diameter metal pipe with a plastic liner. I think the plastic liner can cause a fair bit of drag, especially it its ever been snagged by the cut end of a cable or similar somewhere inside.
I’d be wary of drilling it out unless you’re properly committed, was a bit of a game removing the tube and then getting a wire through.

Thanks for the feedback. swampi – where are you seeing that code? Mine just have two dials stamped into the shifter under the front bit of the hood, and I’m pretty sure it’s March 15 as the “3” is on a dial that goes up to 12. I think the shifters are OK, as there’s no obvious friction in the cable when shifting with just a single bit of outer connected.

These could be metal tubes. It’s a bit hard to tell from the outside. On the XLS it’s just short runs along the top tube so possibly a bit simpler than the RT 58. I’m certainly not in a rush to do it if I can come with a better way.

If you undo the caliper from the mount there is a big long code on the under side

Ah… on the caliper. 22T5, so in the clear on that one.

Just had another go at cabling it up different ways and putting it through the internal runs always kills the shifting. It doesn’t feel too bad when feeding the inner through, but it’s definitely adding drag once it’s under tension, so I think they’re coming out.

Turns out that the only thing inside the frame is some thin plastic tubing. This means that the cable is being pulled straight between the cable entry and exit which, being on the same side of the tube, aren’t aligned with each other so the cable is sawing away on the side of the hole. I suspect that had they been routed to the exit on the opposite side of the tube to the entry this system would probably work OK, but as it stands, it’s rubbish.

Getting them out was trivial, and running outers through was fairly easy having dropped the fork for access.

I’ve now got a full outers on the rear and the shifting is perfect. As a bonus, I’ve re-routed the cables so that they go round the front of the head tube meaning no cable rub on the head tube.

I was a bit concerned that the outers would slide through the frame when turning the bars, so I cut the heads off some tight fitting plastic ferrules and slid them up the outers to the cable entry points so that cables are effectively anchored, which seems to have worked well.

Sounds like a good result. Hopefully the ferrules on the outers trick will stop any rattling in the tubes. Otherwise, have you got room to put a few cable ties round the outer with the tails still on & pushed into the frame?
Typical of OO/PX really, nice frame let down my a few silly details.

They seem pretty secure at the moment, but plan B for rattles is a bit of sponge shoved into top tube.

The one that’s not sorted is the rear brake hose which is as it came from PX and slides noisily in and out when turning the bars, and there’s no metal insert so I’m concerned about frame rub. Temporarily fixed with some tape wrapping an o-ring and jammed in, but want to come up with something neater. Possibly some sugru.

Hi pdw
I am a fellow sufferer of poor gear changing on the Planet-X SLX. I love the SRAM CX1 groupset. I use it on another frame without issue, but the cable routing on the SLX is rubbish.
So, I intend to take your option of drilling out the cable stops in the top tube and feeding a cable all the way through. Can you tell me precisely how you did that please, and also how you removed the plastic tube from inside?
Did you drill-out the cable guides on the rear stay as well? If so, did you have to touch up any paint?
GaryRP

It’s actually a very easy job. There are metal cable stops bonded into the frame, and a bit of plastic tubing strung between them with a flange at each end holding it inside the stops.

Use a drill to take the flange off one end, and you should be able to fish the tubing out the other end (or just drill off both ends and fish the remnants out via the head tube).

Then drill through the back of the cable stops. I used a drill bit that was only just big enough for the cable outer, and then used some tight fitting ferrules with the ends cut off to anchor the cable in position to stop it sliding through the frame.

Threading new cable was a bit of a game. I dropped the fork out, fed an inner cable from the back hole through to the head tube, pushed thread into the front hole, used a spoke or something to fish that into the head tube, then tied the thread to the end of the inner and used it to guide the inner out of the front hole.

I did also drill out the seat stay stops. Again, only just enough to get the outer through so that I could anchor it with ferrules. I didn’t bother touching up.

Thanks. The thread idea is a clever way of feeding the cable through. I’ll also use ferrules as you suggest to hold the outer cable securely. 🙂

There was an issue with the angle of the cable exit on earlier sram shifters, this was exacerbated by short drop and short reach bars causing tight cable curves. sram fixed the port on the shifters. if you still suffer a little I’d recommend bars with larger curves and not ‘nailing’ your gear cables to the bars with excess leccy tape.

Drilling the frames to tke a complete cable run will negate your warranty, so I’d try the bar solution first.

sram’s coated cables are worth the extra in this instance, as are shimano outers which are 0.1mm wider

Do you know if this is before or after the redesign?

Drilling the frame was a last resort on my bike, although I’m happy that I did. As well as sorting the shifting, routing the cables around the head tube works much better and avoids some fairly heavy cable rubbing.