In this video we'll walk through housing and cable installation for drop bar brake levers.
Installing Brake Housing and Cable is part of our video series, The Park Tool Guide to Rim Brakes
Watch this video to see how we've organized the content in this series.
Otherwise, let's begin.
Hello, Calvin Jones here with Park Tool Company.
First, let's go over the tools and supplies needed.
Cable cutter for cutting the cables and also woven and braided housing
side pull cutters for cutting the wound housing
a seal pick for opening up the inner liner
and a bottle of lubricant for inside the housing.
Let's begin by discussing what the role of housing is.
The brake lever will be connected to our caliper with the housing that allows the cable to pass through it,
going around the frame, going down the fork,
and that allows us to squeeze the lever and pull our caliper -
either rim caliper or disc caliper - tight against the rotor or rim.
There are certain housings that are appropriate for a brake system as well as certain cables.
Let's first look at some that are inappropriate.
This is a smaller shift wire - it's about 1.1 millimeters in diameter -
passing through some smaller housing that is shift housing.
The shift housing, we've cut away a section of the outer protective plastic sheath to show inside.
That's not a cable, that's the support wires that run in line with the load.
This provides a very good rigid shifting system.
In braking, it is very inappropriate because we have a lateral force,
much more force going on in our braking that could blow right through these wires.
This is a traditional brake housing called a wound housing. This is a single spiral wrap.
We've cut away the plastic sheet on this one to show inside.
Very strong in the direction of the force of braking
Fairly inexpensive, does a good job of braking,
You can sometimes actually see through the plastic a very subtle line pattern showing the wrapping.
This is another option that is a bit more expensive - this is a woven or braided housing system.
Inside, we have a similar system to the compressionless housing,
but this weave - this is a Kevlar weave on the outside - it gives us a lot of strength.
So this black housing here, we've cut off the plastic to see inside.
The lower piece here is a little bit clearer - you can see through there and see the braid or the weaving.
So, a more expensive system, but does provide a good rigid high-performance brake housing.
This is a traditional drop bar setup. We have no handlebar tape here,
we're holding our shift housing with tape so that we can see a clear view of our brake housing.
We're going to run the front caliper to the left side, so begin by inserting the housing fully inside the lever.
The housing passes underneath the shift housing in this case,
and we want to think about routing now.
Here, if I choose this path, my shift housing is actually pushing forward on the blue brake housing.
So if I come behind here, that is more natural that's much more relaxed.
So think of your routing as you're determining your housing length.
Here, I want to hold as if I have taped the bars -
I'm going to put my hand where the bar tape would end.
So if I hold tight here I can simulate the bar end pulling tight.
This is clearly too short - this would not be a good thing.
In addition, this will drop slightly as you squeeze, so we have to allow for that.
If I come much too long - this would be horribly too long. No reason to have it that long.
Ideally, we'd like to see the housing enter the barrel adjuster in a nice straight line.
That would actually be pretty good right there
but remember the rider might rotate the bars up
they might flip the stem, getting a little bit of height,
so from ideal you may want to add just a little bit,
but not so much it's going way way past.
So I'm going to use my thumb, hold that position right there, I'm a little bit past,
it's going to allow for slight adjustments and this will be my cut point.
The right lever - we roll back the hood, we insert the housing fully inside
and again I want to hold my hand where the handlebar tape would end.
Here, we pay attention to routing.
If I come around to the front of this, it's actually a bit awkward.
I think here if we come behind in this case, it's a much more natural line
so we're going to come behind in this case.
Here we do have a nice test - we don't want it any longer than we need.
We gently rotate the bike all the way in this case to the right
because we can pull this and find out our cut point would be right here.
It's never going to need more than right here.
So if it's shorter than that, it would bind and it would be a problem, say, packing the bike or crashing.
So gently let it roll over, find your cut point right where it would stop - that's it right there.
That's how we cut the rear housing.
On this bike, we're going to have our housing go from the frame stop to the barrel adjuster.
Sometimes you have to compromise and sometimes there is no perfect solution.
Here, we squeeze our brake to the rim.
We want it to enter each stop in a straight line
but this is such a small frame it's difficult to get smooth curves.
So here, that possibly is going to be as good as we can get away with.
That will be our cut point there.
To cut the wound housing, remember it's a single piece of wire.
So we're going to use a diagonal cutters
and we're going to reach to the end of the jaws there where there's the most leverage.
A little bit of flex opens up the coils and helps give us a cleaner cut.
Sometimes there will be a sharp burr.
You can use these to come in and trim. Be careful not to let a piece of metal fly off.
If there's still a little closed end or a plastic liner, we can take a seal pick and open that up.
So that is ready for some oil.
It is possible to also use a cable cutter,
but these are really intended for multi-wire, not the single wire cuts.
The braided or woven housing does use the cable cutter.
The construction here is of multiple wires inside,
so here we find where we want to cut, hold the housing square to the tool, squeeze and it cuts.
Here we see that we've ovalized it a little bit.
We can use these little crimpers on the tool to open that up
and again repeat with the seal pick, if necessary, to open up the inner liner.
Sometimes we will find that there's a jagged end, a burr. Trimming it simply can't get it out.
It can sometimes be filed out by hand, or we can use the axle vice.
Use the 5mm, have the housing barely stick up, gently snug that down
then we can come across with our file, trim up that burr
and make a nice level smooth flat end of our wound housing.
This would not be done with the braided housing.
After the wound wire is filed flat and smooth, it may pinch off the liner.
Use a seal pick to open it up and it's ready to go.
It's also a good idea to use some lubrication inside the liner.
The liner is actually pretty good for low friction,
but what the lubrication provides is a displacement of water.
So, should water try and get in there, this oil is simply going to help keep it out.
Whenever an end cap can be used, it should be used.
This end cap slides on our housing, provides a very nice end to go into our brake
You'll see on some brakes it fits right in.
This is a good model here that would use an end cap.
If we didn't use an end cap here, it's a sloppier fit.
However, some models and some brands this end cap simply does not go in.
They've made the barrel adjuster smaller in diameter. Effectively, it is its own end cap
so this model would not use an extra end cap.
Drop bar brake levers use the mushroom or teardrop end on a brake cable
not the disk or circular end.
This end is cut off,
the cable is fed through the brake lever into the cable anchor out the back
pull it through and make sure the head is properly engaged.
Next, our housing - cut to length - will come up and fully into the lever body.
The housing has stopped inside the body.
We remember the routing we had before -
in this case we chose to come behind the shift housing into the barrel adjuster.
A small hole in the barrel adjuster allows the cable to pass through,
but it will stop the housing.
We can hold as a double-check where our handlebar tape would be,
squeeze this and see that we have a reasonable length of housing.
The process is repeated on the other lever: cable fed through, out the back,
housing installed fully remember your routing
cable to the back into the pinch mechanism.
And that's the basic process for installing housing and cable on drop bar levers.
The next section in our rim brake series is on brake caliper mounting and adjustment.
There are many different types of brake calipers, and we've got videos on most of them.
Select the one that's appropriate for you. If you're not sure what you've got,
watch this video to find out.
If you're working with disc brakes, we have other content with links in the video description below.
Thanks for watching, and be sure to subscribe for more from Park Tool.