After a brief encounter with a car the frame on my trusty Giant was scrap, so after a bit of time spent scouring the classifieds I’m now the proud owner of a Saracen Zen frame.

Most of the parts from the Giant swapped over with little trouble, however the cable routing is totally different. There is a cable guide each side of the head tube, and a plastic ‘channel’ mounted under the bb, so it looks like the inner wire runs naked from the cable guides at the head tube all the way to the front/rear dérailleurs?

Can anyone shed any light on this?

That doesn’t sound particularly unusual. Do you mean they run down the down tube, then up to the front mech (ie bottom pull) and along the chain stay to the rear mech?

You might want to think about running gore cables or the like if you’re worried about grit etc.

I’ve got a zen extreme frame, and that’s exactly what they do. The only slightly unusual thing is the placement of the cable stops – on the bottom of the head tube rather than the top of the down tube. Not a bad idea though, as it stops all cable rub in this area. Never really had an issue with the shifting, although the cables do seem exposed run that way.

My winter bike is a Mantra & has the same routing.Never had a problem with shifting either as you only get that when crap gets in the outers & causes friction between the two.It doesn’t matter if it just gets on the cable,put it this way I’ve had it 3 years & it’s still on the same gear cables,hardly ever clean it either…..

Thaks for the replies, thought i’d better check!