Opinion: I Love Internal Cable Routing, There I Said It
Words: Henry Quinney
You're Joking Right?
No, I'm not. I'm fed up with internal routing being bashed. It's just far better. I admit it - I love internal cable routing. There, I said it. What’s more, I like it in the most basic form with only entry and exit ports. It’s the cleanest looking and most functional.
I think cable routing is like tyre inserts or bleeding brakes in that I often don’t understand how people can go so wrong. I’m not some bicycle rider-cum-technical-polymath… it’s just putting a bit of foam in a tyre or pushing oil through a system. I do, however, follow instructions and tend to have a plan A, B, C and even a D or E on occasion.
I think cable routing is like tyre inserts or bleeding brakes in that I often don’t understand how people can go so wrong. I’m not some bicycle rider-cum-technical-polymath… it’s just putting a bit of foam in a tyre or pushing oil through a system. I do, however, follow instructions and tend to have a plan A, B, C and even a D or E on occasion.
Obsequious adjective: obedient or attentive to an excessive or servile degree.
Bootlicker noun: an obsequious or servile person.
Sycophant noun: a person who acts obsequiously towards someone important in order to gain advantage.
Toady noun: toady; plural noun: toadies - a person who behaves obsequiously to someone important.
Here is a pre-emptive selection of words you may wish to use in the comments. Ever here to help and inform, indeed.
Bootlicker noun: an obsequious or servile person.
Sycophant noun: a person who acts obsequiously towards someone important in order to gain advantage.
Toady noun: toady; plural noun: toadies - a person who behaves obsequiously to someone important.
Here is a pre-emptive selection of words you may wish to use in the comments. Ever here to help and inform, indeed.
I should also mention that I’ve spent the most part of my professional life working as a mechanic. This might support or indeed undermine my argument but, then again, a lot of my interactions with riders or customers en masse would suggest that many of them think that bicycles are simple beings. In a maintenance sense I would agree with this. There is undoubtedly a degree of nuance with some jobs but I'm not sure that extends to pushing a cable through a hole.
Due to my "moto" setup, the front end on my Enduro will never look as clean as this. I don't like it crossing the headtube but it's not the end of the world. 5/10.
Whenever people complain out of sympathy for mechanics I just think that if your chosen mechanic can’t push a cable through a hole without significant difficulty then you’re probably backing the wrong horse. With triathlon bikes and even some of the more aero-orientated road bikes, I kind of get it, especially when you have to cut hoses and cables the perfect lengths to not only fit in but also to keep them from forcing themselves out under tension, but for the lines we use in mountain bikes… it’s just not a problem.
What Has Been Seen Cannot be Unseen.
My current main bike, a Specialized Enduro, is genuinely a remarkable bike but I have the gripe that I really strongly dislike fully guided internal routing and that’s for a very simple reason - I run my rear brake on the left. Small potatoes, I know but it does bother me on a superficial level.
The side that we run our brakes is often subject to the side of the road in which the traffic drives in your home country. There are different explanations for which side of the road one may drive on. Be it what style of horse-drawn carriage your ancestors used, Pope Boniface VIII’s declaration that pilgrims must travel on the left or indeed whether you may wish to keep your sword arm free and uninhibited should you find yourself in the midst of an impromptu enduro joust-off.
Either way, us Brits, with our tea, our biscuits, Duran Duran, two world wars and one world cup, drive on the left and subsequently run our rear brake on the same side. I believe the blasé term is “export”... and we certainly “exported” our culture elsewhere, and not just the driving-on-the-left thing, but maybe the less said about this the better. However, while I'm here, I would just like to take this opportunity to formally apologise to North America for Piers Morgan. To say the man is without redeemable traits would be unfair, as it doesn’t entertain the possibility of harvesting his potentially life-saving organs, but I’m sorry all the same.
But yes, the cables. So, I drive on the left and use my brake on the left. I also like my cable to not cross the headtube. It looks messy, in my opinion. I know some people feel or have felt in the past that longer curves in the cable translate to greater shifting performance or that it's the best way to keep cable off the headtube but I just don't buy it. The real problem then arises when you use a frame that has preordained entry ports for right hand rear braking. Honestly, there is currently a great deal of conversation in my own country regarding the realization that we’re actually not as important as might like to think. Shrinking violets and a lessening say in international diplomacy I can handle but it really hit home when I couldn’t have my cable routing of choice.
What’s WORSE, far worse, is that I can no longer heatwrap or affix my dropper and the rear brake lines together. Oh sweet Boris, the humanity.
A lot of Fuss About Nothing? Possibly.
Riding my bike is a pleasure and anything that inhibits that even slightly is to be avoided at all costs. I know this feeling could be denounced as mere shallowness or snobbery, and while I don't disagree with that, I would say my strong feeling of pro-internal routing is only as ridiculous as being vehemently against it. I think the optimisation of a bike is one of the things that got me hooked in bicycle mechanics in the first place. As soon as I rode a bike I was always curious how to maximize the experience.
A lot of Fuss About Nothing? Possibly.
Riding my bike is a pleasure and anything that inhibits that even slightly is to be avoided at all costs. I know this feeling could be denounced as mere shallowness or snobbery, and while I don't disagree with that, I would say my strong feeling of pro-internal routing is only as ridiculous as being vehemently against it. I think the optimisation of a bike is one of the things that got me hooked in bicycle mechanics in the first place. As soon as I rode a bike I was always curious how to maximize the experience.
No. No. No. No. No. 1/10
 | This idea that we should be at the whims of the most mechanically inept is bizarre. |
I suppose I do take pride in the way my bike looks, even if I am the only one to ever really take a close look at it. It's not totally dissimilar to being house-proud. I mean, we could live in holes in the ground with tarpaulin rigged over the top, label it as "highly ventilated semi-open plan" by way of justification, but personally, I'd really prefer to live somewhere nice even if maintaining it is either beyond me or labour intensive. For instance, I'm not a plasterer but I'm also not suggesting that I want all the guts of the house exposed just in case I want to have a stab at the plumbing. I'd rather just learn how to do it properly or pay somebody to do it well. This idea that we should be at the whims of the most mechanically inept is bizarre.
I want my tires to thud and not prang, my gears to roll through with not so much as a gentle purr, and my bike to always be free from creaks or clacks. Should my bike develop a noise, it's not the end of the world by any stretch but I'm always very happy to remedy it at the first available chance. Ugly or excess cabling on an instrument of pleasure that literally costs thousands of Queen Liz's finest pounds is just... absolutely unthinkable.
Tell me you don't care all you want, but if ever you rode a bike like ol' mate Dangerholm's I think you'd begin to appreciate it. 10/10
Admirable Efforts Aren't Always Enough.
My quest for the neatest routing even took me to try right-brake-rear. It's an interesting question - can one retrain your brain to use the brakes inversely to what you learned? Some people probably can but for me, I personally can’t. I know this because I tried and was genuinely scared for my life. Road cyclists have long run their setup “euro”, ie. front brake a gauche. Not only does it lend to cleaner routing to the front caliper brake, but it also means that one can endo while flicking through the gears at traffic lights, should you be faced with a big hill straight out of the blocks that no amount of tokes on the ol’ asthma inhaler will account for.
So yes, I tried it on my road bike as a hopeful youth coming down a not inconsiderable mountain and it was just awful. I persevered for another week or two but just couldn’t do it. It was a strange thing in that if I had time I could remind myself to do the inverse to what I know. The problem is that when you increase a small element of danger a panicked brain might get confused and overcorrect to do the inverse of the inverse.
But where was I? Ah yes, the cables. Some companies make a very inoffensive stab at well-executed external cabling and honestly, it’s fine. Pole does a good job of it and GT manage to hide their cables in the silhouette of their bike. I mean, it’s fine. It’s okay. It doesn't necessarily upset me. You might see some companies route their rear brake externally which is… well I don’t like it. As we’d say in ol’ blighty, it just isn’t my cup of tea. The argument that you might need to change your brake in case it gets damaged and the remedy is having the hose external to the frame... righto. And if you break a lever, for example, I would probably change the lever and not the whole system but maybe that's a luxury and finding compatible parts might be difficult, especially in the current climate.
In fairness, this is very well executed. 6/10
To me, the "no nonsense" approach seems to be a little heavy on the non-sense. 2/10.
It might be said that it makes installing a new brake slightly easier, but does it really? You’re probably going to have to cut the new hose to length anyway. I suppose it does mean that you don’t have to bleed the brake you’re removing, which is a good thing I suppose. In a “race situation” maybe it has its merits but even then I seem to be immune to the idea’s charms. I would contend that in that particular “race situation”, a downhill bike fork's often don’t let you slip a caliper or lever between the stanctions and the headtube. So, you’re kind of just making work for yourself at that point. You may also run into a similar situation depending on your linkage.
Yes, I have a background as a mechanic but I don’t think that means I have a third hand or pot luck. Common sense and methodical thinking will be your most reliable ally, in my opinion.
I went riding with my friend the other day and upon seeing his bike with cables out every which way, I wondered if he was at risk from accidentally rustling some cattle by inadvertent lassoing or maybe after an OTB he would be found in the woods and the police would assume it had been some kind of auto-asphyxiation fetish gone wrong.
I have never been sat in a car and thought "well, this dashboard is nice but do you know what would really set it off? Lots of exposed wiring". These aren't lawnmowers or agricultural machinery. These are fine vessels and should be able to be designed as such, without people complaining just because their sausage fingers are bereft of the most basic requirements of dexterity to complete a simple task.
Magura dabble with full integration. Not too bad although it seems somewhat bizarre to go to all that trouble with putting a brake inside a handlebar to then have a cable doing a loop-the-loop out of the steerer. 8/10.
What Do I Want?
What I want is nice wide entry ports with malleable rubber grommets, including an option for a blanking plate and some borrowers-pipe-lagging. Installation only requires a small amount of patience and the red RockShox double barb tool (or you can use a cut spoke, some surgical tubing or a cut ferrule to great effect).
So, it’s quieter, cleaner, and looks better. What’s not to love? I suppose I welcome greater levels of integration and can’t wait to see what the next wave of bikes will have. Focus have got an interesting solution, as do Magura, and of course AXS is game changing. I’m excited to see where this will lead next and the svelte bikes we could be riding in the next decade.
If anyone has any queries regarding this article please feel free to handwrite me a strongly worded letter.
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He broke rule number one
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@ltharris:
Pretty much all of us are working through our climbs just to get to the fun downhill runs but when we're on multi-use, shared trails, we have to be better than that. There could be any number of trail users including kids, equestrians, hikers, an injured rider, or wildlife that you can't see down every trail. It's the same as skiing - you have to be responsible for not running into anything in front of you. We need to reinforce this standard so that we can continue to have access to multi-use trails and so that people don't have more reasons to be pissed off at mountain bikers.
Seriously. I’m seeing cables everywhere now. My bedside table is like an horiffic USB orgy. Anyone know where I can get an internally routed bedside table?
Henry: I have just the thing...
and Secondly as I know everyone hates internally cable routing I will do an article slamming external cable routing.
PB - Genius, the clicks will roll in and we'll all be filty rich.
External for rear brake hose.
Love Transition frames for this...
I have three bikes, one with fully external routing, one fully internal and one Transition.
The Transition is the worst one for cables. The rear brake line is precarious (especially on bike racks whose straps always want to interfere with it), noisier and bad-looking on the downtube. Love the bike otherwise.
The way some bike manufacturers have achieved internal routing (and many still do) is absolutely abysmal from a maintenance and assembly standpoint. It looks nice on the outside, but it's a goddamn curse to bicycle mechanics everywhere.
Though FINALLY the industry is catching on to the (old) technology of sleeved internal routing where we can just push brake lines, cables, wires, and housing through one end and it smoothly makes its way out the other - this is a setup I can live with.
Internal routing is the ultimate in form of function vanity in cycling.
The issue I have with some frames is them telling me which side the rear brake line has to come out messing up my backwards desire for MX brakes
You forgot the bit about likely needing to bleed your rear brake.
Sometimes, but you don’t always need to if its within an inch or 2, which is often then case.
Check out what bird have done with their Aether 9C - you can thread the brake through either the left or the right hand side and it pops out the right hole at the other end!
All else is just cosmetics. Come on, brake bleeding just for installing/removing them?! Who the hell has time for that.
Can we have some technical articles about suspension again?
Even if it doesn’t happen often, it’s still an extra step to remove the brake line. Completely unnecessary for questionable returns.
Mountainbiking has become too much of a fashion show. Why hide the technology?
I know, first world problems, but its an extra annoyance for no reason.
Who doesn’t like internal routing these days? Especially when a lot of frames have guide tubes where you go in one end and come out the other so easily?
Half right. Cleanest, sure. "Most" functional? Not really. The function is get cable/hose from bar to devices, and allow steering. Internal or external, both perform that function equally, period.
1. I agree - every high end bike should have internal cable routing, bar none. The problem is to what extent? My Reign 29 actually works really well with big old ports and no internal guiding that means you can switch the hoses to run 'proper' brakes (for I am English as well). The Santa Cruz Nomad 4 is a great example - beautiful internal cabling, with the rear brake running externally. Why???
2. Fully guided cables are super nice to work on, a la Santa Cruz, but as you say, for us English it creates a messy cockpit/head tube area, which I hate.
3. You can have too much of a good thing - for example on road bikes, the Trek Madone, or Specialized Tarmac SL7. I can forgive a couple of cables at the head tube if it doesn't mean spending 5 hours and stripping the entire bike just to swap the handlebars. I'll be happy if mountain bikes never go in this direction.
4. High end bikes should not feature a SINGLE zip tie anywhere on them. If Santa Cruz can do it, everyone can do it. Gone should be the days of bikes needing to have double digits worth of zip ties on them just to keep things where they should be
Ya’ll too picky.
1) Not allowing passage of brake line with olive
2) Articulating brake line at an entry/exit. In 20 years with disc I've never had a line fail. Recently I chaffed a pinhole in my line at the CS entry near the BB. This is a no-BS serious liability. Any lawyer that got his mitts on this would burn said brand to the ground for flawed execution.
My personal preference is well thought out fully external routing that can cater for all cockpit combo's.
I only referenced the naming, not the layout in my comment because both "US-style" and "moto-style" are inaccurate. But here goes the essay:
Motorbikes have a completely different layout with the rear brake and gears at your feet so literally only one part can be transferred: front brake. I find it funny when people call front brake on the right "moto-style" on pushbikes. More like "moped/scooter-style".
In reality it has exactly zero to do with motorcycles and all to do with the side of the road a given country drives on. Motorcyclists all over the world are perfectly happy to have the front brake on the left on their pushbikes and switch without giving it a thought.
Traffic layout is irrelevant for mountain bikes, but they just use what other bicycles traditionally use in an area. You only think it's "better" because that's what you have traditionally had on bikes since you were little and you got used to it. I was raised with my front brake on the left and that's what works for me (and it also doesn't bother me in left side traffic in the UK for the record).
I agree on one thing, we could finally standardise it worldwide. I just think front-left would make more sense as a standard because a) it aligns with shifters so it's one change instead of two and b) more of the world uses it already so it's easier to get done.
I might be weird though because I also think the world should finally agree on one damn side of the road to drive on and stop this nonsense of having to make cars incompatible with one region or another. And I think it should be the right. We don't ride horses for transportation anymore, we don't joust, we don't carry swords. We drive cars and LHD cars are better suited to the majority of human population (right handed).
Tidy, out of the way, accessible without breaking hoses.
I could give 2 f*cks if my bike looks as aero as your lamborghini that you don't even know how to drive. Its a mtn bike.
Do you internal cables show through your skinny jeans?
It would nice if cycling journalists understood this
Internal cable routing can get in the sea, joining poorly routed external cable routing.
It's not difficult bike industry, bit of time, patience and common sense in routing cables. My Geometron G1 is ace, my smuggler is a dog's dinner for the gear cable routing around the bb.
It's more the cluster f*ck around the bb and threading it past the chain guide. Won't be routing it through the chainstay next time, have a specialized levo chainstay guard, so can stick the cable underneath it.
I love internal routing, have had multiple bikes with internal and maybe I've just been lucky but maybe it's taken 5-10 mins longer to install than external. For something that looks so much nicer and is done once a year at most this just doesn't bother me.
In addition, the other day a brake failed on one bike so was removed for servicing. I have another bike with external routing. "Ah ha! Pinkbike commenters win on this one I thought"
However the external routing ran under the shock and through a brace, so I had to remove the shock, and then neither the caliper or lever would fit through the brace, meaning a rebleed AND I had to remove the shock.
External routing. Never hurt me again.
www.pinkbike.com/photo/15433896
I am curious to see the upcoming review of the Devinci Marshall which also has a bit of internal, but mostly external (www.devinci.com/media/wm0j5rom/marshall_pg_kfc_eng.pdf). I like the price point and the made in Canada aspect too.
That too. Hahahahaha.
Many people do not know that this is actually written law in different countries. In the US, bicycles MUST have the front brake on the right side.
In the EU, bicyucles MUST have the front brake on the left side.
If you think this is asinine, you are correct.
The US goes even further as to require all children's bike to use a coaster brake, whereas the EU requires all children's bikes to use hand brakes (with the front brake on the wrong size.
I don't know how it works in the EU, but here in the states, it takes a literal act of congress to change these rules, and our congress can barely pass budget bills, let alone agree on the best methods for a child to stop their bicycle.
I forgot what my point is but it is ridiculous that we all have to work around these arbitrary rules set by people who have never even considered riding a bicycle for pleasure.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading and I love you.
While it may be that some EU countries specify a side for the brakes, it is not a general rule.
Here in Belgium for instance, law dictates a correctly functioning front brake and a correctly functioning rear brake. No mention of sides whatsoever.
There is a DIN (and probably ISO and EU) standard, but unlike directives, standards are not law and thus not mandatory.
The UK and Germany use opposite sides. See the whole Rose bikes shipping fiasco. No EU rule exists. As Henry states, it is based on (fairly odd logic and) which side of the road you drive on.
My point was, as long as manufactureers have to account for both, there will always be a compromise.
The only sensible I.R is for dropper post.
How does he set up a DJ without a loop or two of brake line for barspins? Is he looking forward to trying to track down some special grommet thingy specific to a particular bike years from now?
I dropped the lowers on a fork yesterday to change seals and oil, I'm glad I didn't have to disconnect and bleed the front brake line to do it.
The only internal cable I have on any of my bikes is the dropper line thru a hole in the seat tube, but even the rest of that is external and easy to swap out for a normal post for bikepark use.
I had one bike once with internal routing, I hope it was the last one.
This is where you draw the line? Dangerholm's bendy bit sticking out from the fork leg upon compression is fine, but a reasonable little curl to allow for more fork travel is "bizarre"?
"Looks like" does not mean it does...
They're both reasonable solutions, I just find it silly that everyone cheers for one and shits on the other just because of where they came from.
Whoever pioneered ‘tube in tube’ deserves a modicum of recognition.
I'm in the US but bought a bike built in the UK, which came with the brakes cabled UK-style. I rode that way for a few months before swapping them. It took me over a year to rewire my brain. On my road bikes I never had a problem, and it's less of a problem on the road because unless you're emergency braking (which I seldom do when riding on the shoulder of a road), either brake will do.
But on a mountain bike I seem to emergency brake all the time. And grabbing the wrong brake either means you don't stop in time, or alternately you go over the bars when you'd really rather not. There's one particular root on a trail that I ride all the time. It's right before a nasty bend so ideally you'll use the rear brake to slow while dropping your front wheel over. More than once after my switcher-oo I'd grab the front brake instead, bury the wheel when it hit the ground, and end up on my butt.
Pilot error, yes. But my point is, I'll agree to use metric if the UK will just agree to the brake routing that most everyone else uses.
Because bikes don’t have a clutch and throttle?
The bike world has agreed that rear mech is right hand, front mech left hand, droppers are new in the timescales we are talking about, but they are prettly much left thumb these days; but bizarrely brakes switch by country and personal preference.
The ultimate solution for untidy cables though (especially if you own a SCOTT bike with Twinloc) is to get RS/Sram AXS Reverb and GX derailleur. My cockpit set up is joyously uncluttered since I did that (arguably that IS cheating though).
Way back when, only Klein and Cannondale had internal routing, never had a problem with my Klein.
The Magura set-up is fine. If the hose were cut shorter, it may kink. As it is, it will "compress" like a spring.
So structurally a bike is closer to say, an excavator, than to a car where cables are under the body panels, but not inside the frame.
And just like you would not run hydraulic hoses inside the arm of an excavator, you supposedly would not want to run the cables inside the frame of a bike, just place it so that they don't get damaged (I like the GT solution, though maybe not ideal for cleaning). But I agree, the constraints are very different between a bike and an excavator.
Internal routing is a cosmetic exercise and it can be well done or poorly executed, just like external routing. It’s fine if you prefer internal but don’t act like it’s necessary or better. Looks sell bikes so it’s definitely part of new bike design but external is not inferior. For most it’s functionally better.
Tri bikes, TT bikes, and a lot of aero road bikes can be complete nightmares to cable. My favorite were the madones which would ship with the pre-routed liners wrapped around themselves and the speed concepts that you had to have the housing cut to a mm or two accuracy or it didn't shift/brake properly and you had to run everything using electricians fishing tape. On many bikes like these you just aren't going to get high performance shifting or braking unless you're using an electronic or hydraulic system.
Plenty of road bike examples of cabling that just caused needlessly poor shifting on 10 speed shimano drivetrains. The roubaix was god awful for a number of years.
And for all the haters out there, I respectfully submit that it's ok to value (and even enjoy) someone's opinion, even if you don't agree with it.
Anyone figured another way out?
Why so much hate on external? that is like hating 26
Looking forward to reading more from you!
Cool story bro. Some of us just wanna ride and the extra effort is just a waste of our limited time.
- obsessed with looks
- rides moto brake mounting and doesn’t know why it exists
- prefers road bikes
Sounds like your opinion is completely valid, now don’t ever speak to me again
I think you mean without redeemable traits.
Asphyxiation — have a Google at that one.
- brakes with quick connector (aka formula cura)
- tubes in tubes frame through
No, it isn’t
Maybe it looks cute but I ll pass whenever I can
Maybe you're being facetious, but neither of those is "just". Just as internal routing is never "just" putting cables through holes.
www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/f1-derived-electric-brakes-will-soon-make-their-way-to-everyday-passenger-cars-ar181063.html#:~:text=Electric%20brakes%20have%20been%20around,offer%20much%20better%20braking%20performance.
cartreatments.com/cars-with-brake-by-wire-technology
Your average Camcord driver, does not. Look at the Toyota gas pedal fiasco. The solution to a run away car is turning it off. Simple. Grab the key and turn it to off. Yet, the average driver could not figure out how to do just that. A failure in an electric braking system would be catastrophic. We have throttle by wire but that is relatively full proof. You can have a failure and then just program the throttle to close and you then cruise/ roll to a stop. What happens if the brake system fails? Slam on all the brakes? Lets say, in the middle of a highway at speed? Yeah, good luck with that.
I think @Charlotroy is jealous of Dangerholm's Thunder Thighs.