Internal routing hateful thing rant.

Quite right, as i said it's about cheapness of manufacture for carbon which has unfortunately migrated and become a trend for other frame materials.

It also essentially puts a lot of work beyond the competence/confidence of home mechanics because as you say brakes need to be bled etc. The idea that this is a great thing for adventure bikes when you might need to fix something out in middle of nowhere is just fanciful too. I've seen crank axles eaten through to the point of failure by poorly routed cables contacting them. And you don't even know til it's too late. Yeesh.

I am designing a cx/gravel bike with a local framebuilder that we may put into small batch production. The first thing we both said is "external cables!" - not even in housings for as much as we can get away with.
 
It's really not a modern thing, or related to carbon frames.

Saracen had internal routing on the (very much steel) Kili Flyer way back in 1989. I'm sure they were neither the first, or the only company to do it.
 
Internal routing has been around on road bikes since the early 80's but there are proper ways of doing it so it can be sorted easily

My old bikes are easy but the current stuff??

Pfffffffffttttt!
 
My DP Firebird freestyler had an internally routed rear brake cable. I never changed the outer cable and I loved everything about that bike, so I can't say anything negative about the subject, sorry.
 
I hate it. Complete pain with hydraulic brakes. But I have treated it as character-building. Worst? The chainstay bend inside a Commencal Supreme 24 for my son. Four or five hours. Mainly of cursing. Finally did it with a specific gauge of wire - not too thin and not too thick - poke poke poke, grab with very thin wire nosed pliers through the exit hole in the end of the chainstay. Bad? Cannondale Badboy - as stated above, BB removal to do anything with anything. Best internal? Klein - until the internal PTFE sleeving goes AWOL. Then it’s dreadful. However…Stanton ti Slackline and Switch9er have internal (pain since you need to disconnect and reconnect rear hydraulic) but very fast to do overall. Like Transition, Cotic have eschewed internal for rear brake (well done guys) but Cotic only use internal for the last run of dropper (easy with OneUP or X-Fusion posts) while transition have gone with internal for the rear mech. This makes me angry inside. Very angry. Yet another evening lost to mania.
 
I can see both sides here.

My STS and Klein pinnacle were an absolute pita when it came to routing cables internally. Not impossible but plain frustrating.

My modern bikes that have internal routing seem to have internal sleeves too which makes gear cables easy to fit. Pretty sure brake cables run externally on them all so no issues with detaching hose.

A pinnacle I have literally has an open hole at the bottom of the downtube so no need for any internal sleeves, simples that one.
 
Dont know if ive been lucky, or tight with my wallet, but out of all the bikes ive owned none of them have had internal routeing, so i will have this to look forward to in future, the hardest cable ive had to thread has been a gyro headset on the bmx im building for my youngest
 
ishaw said:
A pinnacle I have literally has an open hole at the bottom of the downtube so no need for any internal sleeves, simples that one.
Click to expand...
My Giant too! The down tube looks to have a gap where the welder went for tea, but it is so the cables can run in the frame without too much faff and exit at the bb shell. Daft idea that…
 
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