As per title really what works well?

jagwire ripcord. And follow the tips about filing/ dremeling the cut ends square.

Ripcord seems to be MTB only.

The Road Pro XL kit is the road specific equivalent from Jagwire. You need the XL one, the normal one only gives you enough cable for running to rim brake callipers.

It’s a bit spendy for what it is. Annoyingly it also includes gear cables, you can’t save by just getting a brake cable kit. If you don’t want fancy gear cables too, you could get the MTB Ripcord kit and then add some normal stainless road inner cables to it for a couple of quid more.

edit: wot he said ^

You can buy just the cables.

You can buy just the cables.

If you mean that Jagwire sell their KEB outer separately, then yes, they list shop rolls of it on their website, true.

But when I was looking not so long ago I couldn’t find a source of it online anywhere in the UK, or the EU. MY LBSes don’t have it as far as I know. You can get it from America but after shipping and customs charges you may as well buy the fancy kit from a UK shop, it works out at nearly the same cost. If you’ve found a UK source for buying KEB outer on it’s own by length, please do share!

I’m over the moon with my Yokozuna cables…but haven’t used any others so can’t comment there. But I can recommend the yokozunas!

DrP

I’d be keen to know what advantage this posh outer gives me over the bog std Shimano stuff I bought from CRC, that’s been working perfectly for 2 years…

I always try & get metal ferules, & square the cut ends with an angle grinder. Then clean out the inner sleeve with a small drill bit. Inner cables are just std stainless jobbies.

posh outer = compressionless.

Standard shimano outer gives a somewhat spongy feel at the brake lever

i’m using jagwire outers and cables with BB5s, MTB ones, and they still have a somewhat spongy feel…
whether less so than if i was using ‘lesser’ outers i’ve no idea; haven’t tried

This reminds me of the days when people would go into a bike shop squeeze the V brakes on a bike, see the seat stays flex and say “it needs a brake booster”.
In reality the wheel would have locked up long before you squeezed that hard.
Never mind it puts more money in someone’s pocket, I suppose.

Watch the lever arm move as you pull the lever. I have ripcords on one bike and std cables on the other and with both, the brake lever stops moving at the point where the brake caliper lever arm stops. Suggests the brake lever ‘flex’ I feel is the caliper mechanism (BB7s and TRPs) more than the the cables. My wheels would be locked way before then. Ripcords don’t eliminate all ‘sponge’ but they are a good outer. VFM though? Not so sure. Shimano full-outers with dremelled flat outers + ‘sealed’ cap ends, good routing and a lightly greased inner cable still feel great after 1000s of miles.

I hate really rigid brakes anyway, they feel wooden. Some flex is good for feel and modulation. Some road disc bikes do feel very spongy on the shop floor though, I suspect a bit of set-up attention (caliper alignment, cable end tidying etc) would remove a lot of it.

Never felt BB7s were very cable outer specific. TRP HyDs on the other hand are night and day between good and average outer (and continuous cable runs which help a lot too).

double post.

I’ve run BB7s and BB5s with Nokon and standard Shimano stuff. Sure, there’s a definite difference in feel, but power never actually felt different as far as I could tell.

Dibbs – Member

This reminds me of the days when people would go into a bike shop squeeze the V brakes on a bike, see the seat stays flex and say “it needs a brake booster”.
In reality the wheel would have locked up long before you squeezed that hard.
Never mind it puts more money in someone’s pocket, I suppose.
For racing whippets perhaps, but being 6’5″ a brake booster did improve both the feel and modulation for me.

Never felt BB7s were very cable outer specific. TRP HyDs on the other hand are night and day between good and average outer (and continuous cable runs which help a lot too).

Yeah, I’ve used BB7s which I think are happy with normal brake outer, and TRP Spyres, which were slightly scary with normal brake outer, but are pretty good with the Jagwire compressionless stuff. Depends on the brake. TRP specifically tell you to use compressionless outer with the Spyres in the installation instructions, for what that’s worth. (They don’t supply any with the damn things though…)

I’ve just tried Clark’s Zero G brake cable with HY-RDs, and it’s pretty poor stuff. The Zero G gear cable was the same. I Couldn’t get the rear changer to index correctly, so I swapped it for some Uberbike cable, which worked perfectly.
The Zero G inners don’t seem to move freely at all.

TRP Spyres, which were slightly scary with normal brake outer,

They felt ok to me with Shimano, bit flexy but nothing bad, and the Spykes I just fitted have gone onto the same inner + standard outer as the BB7s also feel fine.

Has anyone drilled the brake bosses for full length cables? Did it make any difference?

I’ve got a kinesis tripster. Is there any reason not to do this?

Yes, well I used a dremel to open out the bosses on a titanium frame. The titanium was a tough competitor and it took 4 bits to do the job. I think it was worth it – hard to be 100% as it obviously involved a change of cables too and no idea which element made most difference.

I’ve run my 907 with BB7s and full length outers. It was fine.

Surely running full length outers is going to result in more compression under braking than if you used bare inner between cable stops? The longer the outer, the less force it will take to compress it a given distance.

dont think you need to drill the tripster for brake cables – i run full length gore rideon on mine and didnt have to drill…

Am I going to die because I use standard cheap cables and outers 😯

Or do I just not have enough disposable income ?

Surely running full length outers is going to result in more compression under braking than if you used bare inner between cable stops? The longer the outer, the less force it will take to compress it a given distance.

I think most of the ‘compression’ comes from the cable seating into the stop or inside the ferrule(inside the stop). Minimise the number of stops and reduce the accumulative issue. Although I take your point and also doing a good job of squaring off the cable ends in the first place must reduce the problem. TRP hyd instructions specify continuous ideally and not to have inline cable adjusters for this reason I assume.