Before and after: internal cable routing went from nightmare to no big deal

I used to swear any bike with internal cables was a cursed design. First time I tried to fish a shift cable through a new frame I spent like 45 minutes cussing in the garage. That was around 2018 on a cheap aluminum frame with no guides inside. Fast forward to last week when I swapped cables on a 2023 carbon bike from a friend. The difference is wild. They put these little plastic tubes inside the frame now that guide the cable right through. I had the whole thing done in under 10 minutes start to finish. No magnets or fancy tools needed just the wire and the new housing. Has anyone else noticed how much easier the newer frames are to work on compared to the early internal routing stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

jade_singh11d ago

Oh yeah, because what the world really needed was more delicate plastic tubes rattling around inside a bike frame, right? At least they finally realized nobody wants to spend their Saturday wrestling with a cable that's somehow both stuck and invisible. The real test is when you drop one of those little guide tubes into the abyss and have to shake the frame like a maraca to get it out.

miles94611d ago

This is just like the trend of making things "look clean" until you have to actually maintain them. Same energy as those seamless phones where you need a heat gun and a prayer to swap a battery. Or cars where you have to remove half the engine bay just to change a headlight bulb. Designers sat in a room and said "make it neat" and nobody in that room ever had to fix one. So now we all get to shake our bike frames like idiots while the plastic tubes ping around inside like a broken maraca.