thinking of a conversion

[Cataboo]

You can do your own cables if you know how to tune your bike - front & rear derailleurs, and set the brakes. It's relatively easy if you can do that.

I generally keep spare cables around and will often just replace them when I'm replacing a component or swapping some stuff on the bike. the cable crimps for the end - sometimes the cables just get duct tape or something until I get around to buying crimps.

[OakLeaf]

Yep, duct tape on mine too. - actually it's kind of convenient for the front brake, because I need to take the cable out of the caliper to pack my bike for shipping, and if it has an end cap, then I have to disassemble it a bit and have a couple of small loose parts that I'm terrified of losing. I guess I could initially cut the cable long enough to accommodate three end caps, figuring by the time I've shipped my bike three times, it's time for a new cable anyhow...

Replacing cables is pretty easy - a workstand helps a lot when it comes to adjusting derailleur cables - but replacing housings is a bit more of a pain, particularly if you're needing to change the length and figure out how long the new ones need to be, rather than just copying the length of your old ones.

[Cataboo]

Two of my handlebars are carbon and the brake cables & housings feed through the handlebars - so unwrapping everything and then fishing the housing through the carbon is a pain in the neck. I haven't really had problems deciding on the length - but I do tend to err on the side of too long vs. too short. I knew I was planning on switching handlebars on my surly to a much more upright & sweptback version than the flat bars that I started off with - so the housings were cut ridiculously long, which worked fine once I actually switched the handlebars.


If you have any empty ball point pens, you can cut the tubing where the ink is on the inside and sort of melt those over the ends of the cable to crimp off the cable ends. (Okay, between the duct tape and the ball point pen pieces, sometimes my bikes look a little bit less polished than they could)

[tzvia]

For cables and housing, make sure you have a good cable cutter and a small file. For cable ends, don't bother with those metal caps, they will cause the cable ends to spread and fray. I stop by the friendly electronics store for some wire shrink tubing. You can buy several feet for a few bucks and you can guess it will last years. Just cut a small amount, slip it over the cable end, and use a match to heat-shrink it on, leaving it stick-out a bit over the end where it will shrink down more and lock on. Cut it to remove it, and as it was not crimped, the cable end is nice, round and not frayed.