I want to get rid of the full length outer cable guides on my 853 Sanderson, is it advisable to just attack them with a cheep plumbers blowtorch form B&Q? Getting a frame builder to do it would cost as much as the frames worth and doing it with a hacksaw is one slip away from a ruined frame.

Planning on replacing them with the zip tie style guides.

Re-spray as well then? Argos in Bristol did it the same thing you are thinking of (cable guides-wise), to my Voodoo for not much £ (paint was a bit more though 🙁 )

IMG_3571 by oxym0r0n, on Flickr

Hacksaw and file, if you can’t do a neat job there’s no hope!

Heat will *** up a lot of paint – are you sure they’re not tig’d?

I wouldn’t, bike tubes are paper thin. Put any heat in the tube you will weaken it and if you put to much in you could distort the tube. Tube bends very easily when welded/heated. If you grind them off you will inevitably take some of the original tube away as well or even worse go through it. Basically a bad idea, you’ll just have to live with it.

Anyway whoever is putting the new ones on should be able to take them off if they are brazed.

Why swap anyway? Lot of hassle for zero benefit as far as I can see.

I did it on my aging Marin without a blowtorch by carefully sawing, then knocking them off with a hammer, then filing. As 853 is considerably thinner I wouldn’t recommend that.

Wouldn’t it be easier to Dremel out the existing guides ?

The guides are straight through ones already, 2 things annoy me.

1) There’s nothing stoping the cable being dragged through so it works its way through the frame over a ride.

2) They aren’t in the right places, the seat stay one especially catches my calf and shoe and the top tube ones are offset which just annoys me asthetically so if I’m getting it resprayed makes sense to ditch those too.

I was going to suggest drilling holes in the existing guides so that you could slot a cable tie through but no point if you want to reposition them.

Had one ‘fall off’ when at the local shot blasters once.

Heated the other with a proper welding blow torch, came off real quick like less than 10 secs, but the whole tube was glowing too. That was 853 but thought that was air hardened anyway?

Just put a very small cable tie or wire ring on the cables outers either side of the stops. that will solve your problem. Ps just how wide are your calves!

If you going to remove the little hacksaw and finish with file and emery paper… but only if you are confident

Not overly big, but I ride left foot foreward, which leaves my shoe/calf right on the cable guide, it’d be fine if it was positioned further inboard, love the frame, but the designer seems to have gone out of his way to make the guides a PITA.

No problem removing them with a hacksaw and file if you are careful.