Best DereailerCable

Tom or Mary said:

I see that there is the normal wire cables, and some that are I think carbon
fiber(?). The carbon fiber is more expensive. I have to change my front
derailer cable every six months or so. I ride around 6500 miles per year. I
ride a lot of hills, so I am shifting quite often. Would the carbon fiber or
whatever it is be better as far as strength is concerned or are they smother
when they shift?

I don't know about carbon fibre cables but if you are wearing out dr
cables every 3000 or so miles I think there is something wrong in your
set up. I also live and ride in a hilly area and would consider 3000
miles on a cable as just having them broken in and likely to have
stopped stretching.

The original cable broke after six months, and I have been replacing them at
the same rate. Other bikes I have owned the only time I broke a cable was
the brake cable. Maybe there is a problem with the design of the bike.

Tom

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I don't know about carbon fibre cables but if you are wearing out dr
cables every 3000 or so miles I think there is something wrong in your
set up. I also live and ride in a hilly area and would consider 3000
miles on a cable as just having them broken in and likely to have
stopped stretching.

Or perhaps there is some rough spot over which the cable runs and it is
wearing at a very accelerated rate. I'd check that out first because as
you say your experience with other bikes has been different.

Tom or Mary said:

I see that there is the normal wire cables, and some that are I think carbon
fiber(?). The carbon fiber is more expensive. I have to change my front
derailer cable every six months or so. I ride around 6500 miles per year. I
ride a lot of hills, so I am shifting quite often. Would the carbon fiber or
whatever it is be better as far as strength is concerned or are they smother
when they shift?

There are teflon coated cables which have less friction and greater
resistance to corrosion. They generally cost about twice as much. i.e.
$5-6 instead of $3.

I'll reiterated what one of the other posters said. If you are breaking
a lot of cables, check for rough areas along you cable path.

--
Dane Buson - [email hidden]
I thought there was something fishy about the butler. Probably a Pisces,
working for scale.
-- Firesign Theatre, "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger"

Hi Tom,

Quoted message said:

The original cable broke after six months, and I have been replacing
them at the same rate. Other bikes I have owned the only time I broke
a cable was the brake cable. Maybe there is a problem with the
design of the bike.

If you are experiencing excessive cable breaking you may have a
condition similar to the one that I had although mine was on the rear, not
the front. I shift the rear a lot and broke 2 cables within 2 or 3 thousand
miles each. Here's what I found:

Since I first got the bike I had adjusted the rear cable indexing
adjustment (cable length) so that it shifted well but when the second cable
broke I looked more closely to try and discover what might be the cause. I
noticed that when shifted into the lowest (largest) sprocket the cable was
under a fair amount of tension due to the adjustment of the low gear limit
stop being a bit too limiting. This might not have been a big deal but at
the time I almost always downshifted to the lowest gear when coming to a
stop so that I could take off with the least effort and, in addition, at the
end of a ride I always left the bike shifted onto the lowest gear for the
start of the next ride. This meant that the cable spent a lot of time under
unnecessarily higher tension.

This time I adjusted the low gear limit stop screw so that the cable,
when in that lowest gear, is no longer held in high tension and rather the
tension comes only from the spring in the derailleur (the one that causes
the derailleur to move to a higher (smaller) sprocket when the cable is
relaxed, not the one that holds tension in the chain). I have now gone over
6 thousand miles on the latest cable, more than twice what I had gone on the
first 2, and it's still working fine.

Perhaps your front derailleur has a similar adjustment problem with the
high gear limit stop being too limiting and causing excessive tension in the
cable when shifted to it. Something to check anyway.

Terry

I will take your suggestions. I always leave my front derailer on the high
gear which under more tension. When I arrive home, I will shift to the low
front gear.

Tom

If you are experiencing excessive cable breaking you may have a

Quoted message said:

condition similar to the one that I had although mine was on the rear, not
the front. I shift the rear a lot and broke 2 cables within 2 or 3

thousand

Quoted message said:

miles each. Here's what I found:

Tom or Mary said:

I will take your suggestions. I always leave my front derailer on the high
gear which under more tension. When I arrive home, I will shift to the low
front gear.

Tom

If you are experiencing excessive cable breaking you may have a

Quoted message said:

condition similar to the one that I had although mine was on the rear, not
the front. I shift the rear a lot and broke 2 cables within 2 or 3

thousand

Quoted message said:

miles each. Here's what I found:

I think you misunderstood the post, I did too on first reading. I was
surprised by his experience, I wouldn't have thought it possible.

It doesn't matter what gear you leave your bike in, but that wasn't what
he was saying.