Best Lubricant for brake cables?

[Triskeliongirl]

What do you guys think is the best lubricant for brake cables. One of my brakes has been feeling sticky lately, so I want to unwrap the bar tape and apply grease between the cable and housing, but what type (i.e. relative viscosity) is best? I have everything from that very solid stuff in a tub, a very thick pourable grease in a tube, typical chain lube, to a very thin pourable lube (tri-flow). I am thinking the very thin one is best, but curious what you guys with more experience think.

[DebW]

I've always used solid grease. The green Philwood stuff or Pedros or cheap lithium grease should all work fine.

BTW, you shouldn't have to unwrap the bars if you pull the cable out through the brake lever. Try needle-nosed pliers to reach in and pull.

[Triskeliongirl]

Thanks Deb for all the good tips!!!

[lph]

While we're on the subject, I've had a couple of funny (strange) things re brake cables.

1. this winter my brake cables were awful, and we were out of solid grease, so i went to the bike store to ask what they'd recommend to lubricate. "Lubricate?" the guy said, and just stared at me. They never lubricated the cables when they had a bike in for service :confused:

2. I found another bike store that *did* know what I was talking about. He recommended very thin oil, and said that grease would "freeze" in winter. :confused:

3. I replaced the housing on the rear brake cable a week ago, but there was a terrible "lag" in the braking after I'd done it. I finally figured out that the culprit was the little metal endpieces on the cable housing. There was a tiny rubber ring inside each endpiece, presumably to keep water out but also creating a huge amount of friction :confused: I just picked them out with a sharp pair of scissors (and the brakes were perfect), but am still confused as to why they were there/why they didn't "work".

[Triskeliongirl]

Wow, thanks Deb. That was silly easy and its working great now.

I had the same experience w bad advice from LBSs. Last time this happened and I asked the guys at my LBS what kind of lubricant to buy, they sold me new brake cables. They said that modern cables come with a built in lubricant, and that applying more grease will just attract dirt, and when they fail you had to change the cables, housing, etc.

This one of the reasons I started to work on my own bikes. My cables look fine, my housing looks fine, the only problem was there was inadequate lubrication between them. It was great to learn I could do this without even unwrapping the bars. The trick was to push the cable up first, to get that bally thing pushed up enough to grip with the needle nose pliers. Then first I dripped the tri-flow down to get into the part still covered by housing, and then rubbed some pedros solid grease over the length of exposed cable, then I pushed it the other way and did the same thing to the cable exposed on the other side of the housing (I couldn't just remove it from the housing, cuz of the cable disconnects on my s/s coupled bike). I pushed it all back and forth a few times, and then secured it back in place and it works great again! It took all of five minutes to fix.