Im going to service my cables tonight as winter grot has taken its toll on shifting. The last couple of times I just replaced everything. but since I bought XT last time I want to try and be less wastefull and just clean them out.

I have never been a big fan of oiling cables – in my experiance they last longer dry as the oil atracts filth or at best just gets washed out. But since the cables arent new anymore I have been pondering what else I have in the garage that might work better.

My initial thought was dry motorcycle chain lube. Anyone tried dry lube before? I intend to spray a load of degreaser down the outers first.

Not sure about others but Sp41 seems to come with a silicone based lube inside which is probably why they say not to use any lube in case you use something that won’t mix. I believe them to be silicone lubed as the inner liners are plastic.

Rock n roll do a lube which they market for cables. Might be worth a look.

It will have to be something in the garage – not buying yet another expensive little bottle of “snake” oil containing (as near as makes no difference) exacly the same stuff as the last little bottle I bought.

I do have some silicone grease though – the dry lube could be too?

Personally I’m a big fan of SP41 in terms of fit-and-forget but I have a couple of bikes with interrupted outers and on these I use household polish on the exposed sections.

Hmm, I have heard of polish – I think the Mrs sometimes talks about it. Il see if she has got any.

SP41 cable outer comes pre lubed with Shimano’s special silicone grease so when I’m fitting new cables I use Servissol silicone grease to lube the outers and inners. The rest of the time I use Middleburn cable oilers and silicone spray lube to keep them like new

dry lube is normally PTFE in a solvent carrier.

If you have some silicone grease I would use that. Best thing for lubricating metal on plastic and water and oil resistant (resist wash out)

cheers

cablemagic is good stuff. I use a syringe to get the stuff down into a new outer.