thinking or purchasing some gore ride on sealed gear cables as mine are currently shocking and struggling to cope with copious amounts of dirt/ etc

one quick question, as im not theeeee most competant of fettlers, if i replace with said gore ride on, is it simply a case of replacing like for like, or when ive finished and think ive completed it will i then suddenly have all of my gears out of sync and have a huge headache trying to sort them out too? basically will my gears still operate the same, ie no messing with H L screws/barrel adjusters and the likes??

fankkkks!

You shouldn’t need to reset the limit screws but you will almost certainly need to tweak the barrel adjusters to get the indexing correct. That’s pretty straightforward though, just check the Park Tool guides and you’ll be fine.

BTW – Shimano SP41 outer & decent inners works out waaay cheaper than Gore

cheers thepurist, will it merely be a ‘tweak’ though or will it be a full on indexing from fresh job? if i dont have to adjust the barrel adjuster to start with when installing them, why would i have to adjust them when new ones are in place? assuming they are the same legnth etc? sorry for my foolishness no doubt 🙂

There’s a difference between the limit screws (which set the physical range of motion of the front/rear mechs) and the barrel adjuster (which adjusts the tension in the cable). If you take off the old cables without touching the mechs then you won’t need to reset the limit screws, but the cable tension will obviously need resetting as you’ll have replaced the inner.

When you put the new cables in make sure they’re taut enough so there’s no slack, but not pulled tight like a guitar string. Gentle hand tensioning should be enough for this – also reset the barrel adjusters so they’re wound in almost fully clockwise, as you’ll normally need to add tension to get the indexing sorted (by winding the adjuster anti-clockwise) rather than release it.

ok cheers the purist

so when i take out the old cables, simply turn the barrel adjuster almost full clockwise before putting new ones in, the tweaking should be obvious from there i guess….

will i have to do the same with the front mech barrel adjuster too? or can i leave that one well alone?

just had a look at the xtr gear cable set, and that seems to get just as good reviews as the gore one….hmmmm

Another option ….fit middleburn cable oilers on a cheaper set of outers.

I bought the cheapest inners and outer cables that CRC had at the time, and fitted them with the oilers. A little blast of WD40 after each ride, and the shifting has stayed silky smooth ever since.

how exactly can you clean your inners and outers without taking them apart? im 99.9% sure my shifting has gone a bit crap due to much and general cheap and crap inners & outers……is there a way i can spruce them up a bit? any easy way at getting at them with a bit of spray lube or somethibng?

Middleburn Oilesr are quite, quite useless in my experience, XTR cables are good, but you may need to buy some extra outer depending on the cable runs on your particular bike – they’re also easier to fit than the Gore ones.

It’s easy for me to say, but I think you’re making a bit of a mountain out of a molehill on the adjustment front – make sure you’ve got access to a decent set of cable cutters btw, trying to cut cables down with standard pliers will be hopeless. And as above, the Park Tool web site has comprehensive ‘how to’ stuff that should see you right.

How do you keep your bike shifting cleanly if you don’t understand cable adjustment btw? [sorry, I guess the point is that you don’t…]

As far as cleaning in situ goes, slacken off all the adjusters – maximum clockwise turn to stop and you may be able to pop the out cables out of the stops, move them along the inners, clean the inners, get some lube inside the outers etc.

If you don’t have cable cutter, I find heating the cable with a lighter then snipping seems to make a pretty clean cut.

I have had a few problems with the Gore cables. The inner is coated. If this coating frays then the cable sticks. Happened more than once. LBS reckon that its a common problem, but everybody seems to rave about Gore cables on here.

I don’t. I used to like them, but with the advent of full length outers I don’t see the point in them.

djflexure, this sounds like older Gore cables your LBS are talking about. The coating is bonded onto the cables on the new generation so this is no longer a problem.

djflexure, this sounds like older Gore cables your LBS are talking about. The coating is bonded onto the cables on the new generation so this is no longer a problem.

Unfortunately happened this year with the new cables on two bikes. I use a SRAM X9 rear derailleur. The cable feeds through a small hole. It frayed at this point on both bikes and then jammed on the liner.

when fitting the new cable just turn the barrel adjusters on shifter and mech all the way in. chain on the smallest sprocket, run the cable through and into the mech clamp, pull taught and nip it up. assuming the stops are all in the right place, 80% of the time the gears should be fine (ime). cables will stretch over a few uses, so use the barrel adjusters to take up the slack.

the other 20% of the time they’ll be a complete nightmare 😉

Done all this from basic cables, to sealed cables and now back with std cables (full and interupted) but now just buy bulk SP41 outer and decent SS pre-stretched inner or XTR inner when on special offer. I also buy the XTR kit with the rubbers and ferrules if/when I need to 🙂 Don’t get we wrong the Gore are good but after about 2-2.5 years the coating on the inners fails and stuff up the shifting. I tend to replace std cable set as and when, generally every year. I have done it so many times I reckon I only take about 30 mins FR and Rr 🙂

BadlyWiredDog – why exactly do you say the oilers were useless?

You are the 1st person I have ever heard give them a bad review.

I give mine a blast after each ride. And so far so good. They feel as smooth as the 1st day they were set up.

Personally I rate RideOn cables (the more expensive ones with the liner and outer) – I’m a lazy so and so, and so like things to be genuine fit and forget: suspension, wheels, tyres, brakes and gears. And, touch wood, the RideOns have been just that for 2 years now, where previously I had to fully recable everything once a year.

Just take your time doing the cabling, do it carefully, and that should mean you only have to do it once!