jayp410

Just had to replace a broken shifter cable on my externally-routed road bike. (Luckily, the cable broke on the bike stand when I was adjusting the shifting, which had gotten bad...and now I know why). Being externally routed, it was easy: pull the cable through and replace. On the road, I could install a spare cable, or, if not carrying a spare, could at least anchor the broken cable to a downtube cage bolt, adjust, and ride home.

This got me thinking that with an interally-routed cable, that wouldn't work so well. It probably wouldn't be easy to pull it through out the bottom bracket to anchor the cable to the frame, and after doing so, it might require taking out the fork and/or bottom bracket to route the new one. If you carry a spare cable and some thin Spectra fishing line, could tie the line to the old and new cables and pull the new one through. I did this on my new internally-routed bike build, after accidentally cutting the new RD cable too short. However, my bike also has internal plastic sleeves that run through the plastic BB cable guide, which are barely larger than the cable itself, and even with a cleanly-cut cable and the very thin fishing line, it was not easy to pull it through. If the cable end was frayed, the end would be considerably larger and might be almost impossible to pull through. So to fix this on the road, I'd have to also carry one of those heavy cable cutters to get a clean cut. Yeah, that's not happening.

So it seems that I'll either need to remember replace the shifter cables regularly (before they show symptoms of fraying). When I inevitably forget to do that, it will mean a call to the wife to come pick me up.

How do you deal with this?