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I've got a new Gravel bike frame with (semi) internal routing to do, it occured to me that having an in-line connector just after the bar tape could make my life easier for future maintenance tasks. Unsurprisingly it seems Shimano thought the same and apparently did some versions of their levers with exactly this feature, unfortunately though not mine and it doesn't seem to be something you can buy aftermarket form them.
I have found a couple of places selling female to female fittings that allow you to put doubled up compression fittings in-line, which might sort of suit the task, has anyone else managed to find an (ideally) affordable way to do this?
I'm probably going to end up not bothering as it's adding more complexity than it really solves but I can see similar use cases, such as fully internal routing, where there might actually be real benefits.
What maintenance tasks would you need to disconnect the brake lines for? I can’t see it being something you’d need to do often enough to be worth it. You might not be able to fit a hose back through the internal routing if it has fittings on it anyway, I know I can’t on mine. It needs the olive removed to fit through the frame opening etc
Headset bearings
As said if you have fully intenal routing then you wouldnt have really space for a inline connector as space through the headset and frame are pretty tight
Chances are you will have to remove the olive to get the hose out of the internally routed bars, stem & frame (had to do this recently when switching from a seperate bar & stem set up to intergrated bars & stem
One thing i did realise is that Shimano use olives with no split in them (unlike Hope) this small detail can make a lot of difference, in my case i had to cut the olive off to remove the hose from the old bars so i could fit the new intergrated bar and stem, due to cutting off the olive the hose was then too short which meant fitting a new hose and bleeding the brake
If Shimano used olives with a split in them (like Hope) then i could of just prised the olive open to remove it, left the barb in place, re-routed everything, fitted a new olive and reattached the original hose without having to fit a new hose and re-bleed the system
Sure @benpinnick said he was testing something like this for the Bird Gravel Bike?
You can buy QR couplers for hydraulic lines. I am not sure how small they go but you can certainly get them for motorcycle brake lines. The click apart and seal so no fluid is lost
these are for bicycle brakes
https://zenocycleparts.com/collections/q-connector-bicycle-hydraulic-quick-coupler
What maintenance tasks would you need to disconnect the brake lines for?
Nothing in particular TBH, and like I said I probably won't bother with extra couplers as the faff will be inverse to any benefits, but it did get me thinking about how stuff like ICR and various versions of internal routing still just seems to be a bit ad-hoc, but manufacturers have been poking cables and brake lines through frames for well over a decade by this point.
Like I said my frame is not fully integrated, it's going to be a simple job TBH it's only the down tube I need to feed things down, so headset isn't a worry. But I was musing about the ICR headset issue as well, just seems so Lazy from a design perspective to either not consider or not care that a relatively basic task like changing an upper headset bearing...
Now I'm thinking about the next frame and what sort of routing I'll tolerate (and I've not even built this one up yet)...
Anyway my boring old musings are all done for now...
They're a 'thing' for S&S coupled tandems. First Google return produced this https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/brakes/100-dry-hydraulic-coupling-fittings-no-hose-supplied/
Looks massively overengineered/complex so a bit more Googling might produce something a bit more svelte.
I'm not sure what hose coupler they used, but Gloria used something like this to enable you to quickly disassemble the All World gravel bike: https://road.cc/content/feature/all-world-titanium-travel-bike-you-can-take-anywhere-310809
Formula do a speed lock