datlas 

Of course you are correct. And I am keeping my external-cabled Habanero as long as possible, because it's stupid easy for my idiot mechanic (me) to set up and service.

sjanzeir

All those fresh graduates in marketing and advertising need jobs after all...

79pmooney

I have as bike where internal cables (well, it's a fix gear so just one cable) would be an inconvenience at the least and potential nightmare for how I use the bike. I have both "road" and "climbing cockpits. Road - traditional drop bars, just over shoulder width wide, regular brake levers cabled to SunTour Superbe calipers. The climbing setup is very different. Deeper pista bars, V-brake road levers with huge hoods my hands love when honking up steep hills and cabled to dual pivots to get the brake power back up.

I often swap cockpits on impulse after changing my mind on where I feel like riding. Takes less than 5 minutes. 5mm Allen to undo the rear brake cable and the caliper. 10mm wrench to remove both calipers. Pull rear brake housing out through the three TT housing guides. 6mm Allen to pull the stem out with rear cabling and whole front brake system. Hang handlebar on rack and grab the other bar. Repeat in reverse. Running the rear housing is easy and fast, always. If I had to pull a guide wire/string through, this simply would not work. The time would come when I'd forget, it'd break or detach. Yes, my fault, but also a ride ender. And means focusing attention to something that could be as simple as choosing my shoes and putting them on.

I love the three exterior housing guides and full length rear housing for two other reasons. It adds "sponge" to the rear brake action, meaning that I am less likely to lock the rear wheel up in hard stops. I can do roughly equal pulls of each brake and get very predictable (and very good) braking power. Also transitions from housing to bare cable and back are the sources of issues like kinking and rust. Additional housing guides beyond the stops alleviate that, but now there are more fixtures to braze and paint around than my 3 guides. That bare cable is also nasty to paint and decals when you pick up the bike not thinking. Yes, running internally alleviates that last point but ... I've heard of internal guides coming loose and rattling and I knew someone years ago who'd regularly break his frames at the rear brake cable exit. Get an new one under warranty and repeat. (Rant, rant! )

jackb

There is internal cabling and there is internal cabling. The older internal cabling bikes have the cables bowing out at the handlbars before they are routed into the bike frame. Some newer bikes don't have any cable bowing out as the cables go dirctly from under the handlebar tape right into the stem or steerer tube. I watched a Cycling Weekly video in which the cables that go into the stem are so involved in the engineering design that simply changing a stem requires complicated mechanical work that takes a couple of hours. I don't know if this is true for the cables that go directly into the steerer tube.

This cable thing strikes me as it does other people on the forum, a technological development designed to make older bikes appear obsolete and new bikes on the cutting edge of development. No need to buy a new bike because of cable routing. If you like to maintain your own bikes, simpler is always better. I don't even like hydraulic brakes. Now I have to bleed the lines, a PIA to say the least. Mechanical brakes have always stopped me and presented no maintenance hassles.

rjones28 

Hydraulic lines don't contain cables.

the sci guy 

As a person who constantly likes to tinker with my bike and change bars, stems, tape, cranks, whatever - including changing cable colors depending on my mood and color design for the summer, I find internal cabling annoying as hell. I also don't really care for the shape/aesthetics design of some of the newer totally internalized stems/headsets/spacers/ and as a home bike mechanic I resent the complexity of the newer designs when it comes to doing your own work at home. I like taking an afternoon reworking a whole bike or a tune up, but I don't want to spend 3 hours just futzing with cables in a steerer tube.

ZHVelo

I catch my cable on my city bike almost every time I put it back into its stand in my buildings bike room. Because everything is so tight and the handlebars so wide (of all the surrounding bikes). Massively annoying. Right, so it is an exception when this is done and that means the entire concept is silly?

Wanted or thrust upon us? What about electric cars? Certainly heavily advertised but given today's electric grid in many countries, they don't make that much sense. Also, they are far more expensive than normal cars. These things happen all the time.

Keep your cables showing. I gladly ride my clean looking integrated bike.

tendency

It's a classic case of solving a problem that didnt exist - like many of the supposed 'upgrades' and 'improvements' to bikes over the past 15 years. Take for example disc brakes - great on mountain bikes where you need the improved stopping power and modulation - but on road bikes? Not so much. Same for electric shifting. But then again - I'm a retro grouch

Kapusta

All hassle, zero benefit IMO.

What I find the real hassle is not so much the routing itself (though that is more unnecessary work) It is the fact that I cannot remove (or install) a shifter/derailleur, brake caliper/lever, or dropper post/lever as one unit. They have to be disconnected.

In the case of cables, it is a little hassle. In the case of hydraulic brakes, it means a bleed, and with my maguras, it means several bleeds.

As far as the benefit of not getting cables caught on things… the place they are most likely to get caught is around the bars, or in the last few inches before RD… which internal frame routing does not even address.

I guess what I find so silly about internal is that it hides the sections that least benefit from it (both visually and practically).

mstateglfr 

You keep an integrated cable bike in a group bike room? That is bold since integrated cable bikes are usually $3k and up.
As for internally cabled bikes, your situation is an exception. I would bet not many need internally routed cables(I assume it would be a downtube cable that catches?) due to storing their bike in a group bike room that lacks space. That just seems like an issue which is not typical. Regardless, it is an issue and its great that internally routed cables help solve your frustration.

ZHVelo

It is very much a thing where I live that people have a bike room in the building. And no, I don't keep it there, I was pointing out a situation where hanging cables is an annoyance. But I am glad you are super happy with your external cables, so glad with them in fact that you don't need to attack another type of bike cabling.

seypat

The OP, then person who dug up the grave, was/is interested in why people are hating on internal cables. Every poster responding is simply answering the question with the exception of you. If a person doesn't have any hate for internal cabling, then no need to respond. Simple as that.

sjanzeir

I'm the person who dug up the grave. And I dug up the grave not because I was interested in why people are hating on internal cables - I know why I hate internal cables and that's all the reason I need - but because I was interested in hating on the people who invented internal cable routing and the ones who thought that internal cable routing on a folding bike was a good idea. What I would really like to say about those people and do to them is unprintable and most likely ground for a permanent ban, so let's just leave it at that.

ZHVelo

Ah my bad, I did indeed fail to notice this is a thread for whining people who want to complain about a feature that they don't need buy. Bye then.

sjanzeir

It's a bug, not a feature.

eduskator

Helping reviving this dead thread...

It depends on how the ICR is built / engineered IMO. Some companies (Giant, for instance) do s*ck. LBS hate to perform maintenance on Propels because of this.

I am a fan of hidden cables when the whole thing is flawless. Wireless shifters makes it even easier.

sjanzeir

My lousy experience with internal cable routing dates back to the 1990s with my old, early 90s gaspipe Raleigh; with that thing's rear brake cable having been routed through the top tube, the slits were cut a little too narrow. They probably chose to route the cable that way more as a cost cutting measure than some engineering breakthrough, to save on having to weld lugs to the exterior of the frame (this was what was known at the time as a "300-dollar bike.") Heck, they did even bother to use rubber grommets for the slits! You would think that wiggling a cable housing into a straight pipe and out the other end should be simple enough for a human with some basic mental capacity, but every time I had to change out the cable, the narrow slits would peel the coating off and expose the coil. Expletives would ensue, with a corroded cable following soon after. ICR is FUBAR, IMHO.

ZHVelo

Can't be a bug if users want it. If it wouldn't sell at all, they would stop making it.

guisar

Ha! I think every builder and mechanic would 1000% agree with this, internal cabling is a PITA to setup. While we offer it on our road bike we're redesigning with a focus on making it trival to setup and maintain. Atm, cabling takes longer than the rest of the bike to build.

burnthesheep

Lol.........etap plus hydraulic. Wireless and never have to run a brake cable/housing. Retro grouches won't even worry about that, but still........if folks care about this then hydraulic brakes and electronic shifting resolves the many sins of internal routed mechanical shifting and braking.

So if we're talking "mechanical shift, mechanical braking".........I can sow some hate. I despise it. Squishy shifting and brake feel for the aesthetic or the tiny bit of aero. For electronic and hydraulic.........why not? Set and forget.