sekaijin

Hello - glad to return to BF! I've been kind of checked out for a while, since I had no bike projects going.

Now I have a winter project. I'm planning on rebuilding this 1993 Koga-Miyata TerraLiner, for CX use.



My first question is about the internal cable routing on the top tube. Is it tricky to remove and replace that housing? It is firmly in place with a little plastic collar at each end.



Thanks in advance!

randyjawa 

It would surprise the heck out of me if those cable casings and ends were not designed to be removed and with relative ease. My guess would be to pull harder, watching closely to what is going on at ground zero. I must also qualify that statement by saying that I could be completely wrong. I have never worked on a similar bicycle.

As for rerouting the cable, a decent frame will have a tub joining the entry and exit holes on the frame, making it easy to thread your cable through. If there is no inner tube, then feeding the cable can be a bit tricky.

In days gone bye, I have used different methods for getting the cable through, finding the best to be a piece of string, with a straight pin attached at the lead end. I use a bit of super glue to hold the pin to the string.

Once dry, drop the pin end into the entry hole and, with the head tube facing up, allow gravity to move the pin/string through the frame tube. When it gets close to the exit hole, use a magnet to capture the pin. Pull the string out a bit. Attach the string to the new cable and gently pull the whole works through.

That has worked for me and it is the easiest way to go if there is no inner tube.

mobilemail

I wonder if something as thin but a little stiffer might work well, possibly a guitar's skinny string, I forgot which one they call it.

Ciufalon

The other way to do it is to remove and replace the cable and the housing separately. First one, then the other. Slide one or the other out first and replace with the new piece, then remove the other and use the cable or housing that you've already replaced as a guide.

BTW, I just bought a 1993 TerraLiner frame and fork just like that. Same yearand paint scheme, but in a 58 cm.

EDIT: This assumes the housing runs all the way through.

wrk101

I always leave an inner cable in place and carefully thread the new housing over it. Sometimes I have to taper the leading edge of the new housing a bit. Do not pull out housing and cable at once!

sekaijin

Checking back in ... I did it! Thanks for the advice.

The fact that it took me two months, should give you an idea of the pace at which I work. Actually I did a fair bit of other wrenching first, before I got to the cable replacement. It was not first in order, but it was bugging me most at the outset.

What I did, and lessons learned:

I removed the old cable, inserted the new cable, then removed the old housing and installed the new housing over the new cable. That advice from Ciufalon and wrk101, not to remove both the old cable and old housing at once, was really valuable. Thank you.

Randyjawa, there was no internal tube joining the two cable holes inside the frame.

The other tricky part was, the little black plastic collars in the cable holes. I needed to remove one, to thread the new cable housing through it on exit, and it was not easy to remove. There was swearing.

What I learned is: hidden inside the top tube, the plastic collar has a large, sturdy plastic flange securing it in place. If you rotate the collar piece 90 degrees, the flange can be jimmied out of the oblong top-tube hole. If you just pull on the collar piece in the direction of the TT and cable route, it stays stuck in place. By the time I figured that out, I'd done some puilling on it with a pliers - tried to do that gently, but still put some pliers teeth-marks in it. There already were some, now there are some more. Proof that I was not the first idiot in this bike's 19 years, to figure that out by trial and error.

So now we've gained this obscure piece of knowledge - how to replace an internally routed top-tube cable on a 1990s Koga-Miyata without damaging the cable hole collars. I hope someone in the BF C&V community can benefit from that, in a future reading of this thread.

dorups

Trying this now on a koga miyata runner 1991. Thanks for the obscure knowledge, 10 years later someone needed it.

dorups

Couldnt get the collar out, but I did find an alternative solution. Get a really thin allen key and poke it through one collar. Push the cable housing through the other collar and feel for it with your allen key. With a bit of luck and 5 minutes in my case you slide the allen key inside the cable housing and you can direct it into the collar.

oneclick 

On the problem of getting something to run between the holes in the first place, given no internal tube -

thin strong thread introduced at one end, a household vacuum hose at the other, done.