Internally routed cables through our frames are a bit of a pain in the back,
and definitely that's how I feel right now,
because I have to run a cable here
to my seat post to install a "mighty" dropper post.
And how do I do that without removing my bottom bracket?
For those of you that watch my video on the PressFit bottom brackets,
you know that I have a Wheels Manufacturing in there,
I don't want to take that out so,
how do I accomplish this
by having no special tools in my house?
Park Tool has a kit, it is called IR 1.2, internally routing, 1.2 I think.
That consists of a few things.
I don't have any of that but I found a little magnet in the house,
internal cable,
got some string, that's a fishing tape,
you know what that is, and even some cable housing.
I'll see which one of these is going to help me accomplish my task.
If I am to be inspired by the Park Tool idea of using a magnet on this carbon frame,
and try to drag a piece of metal on the inside of the frame,
all the way down,
the problem that I'm having is,
if I put the magnet here on my frame - look at that, it stays.
What that means is that there is metal in the frame already, and it is,
because I have this, which is my shifter cable,
that is going through so that's not gonna work in my case.
If I had the equivalent port down here somewhere
and some bikes do have that,
then you can get away even with
just fishing your housing straight through the frame,
because then, through that bottom opening here you can see it,
grab it with a hook or something and bring it up.
But in my case, again, once I bring the cable down here at the bottom,
how do I grab it, and convince it to actually make this,
close to 90 degrees, actually is more than 90 degrees,
to come back up?
My next idea is to use this hook, made out of the coat hanger,
this is some dental floss,
and I'm gonna use my fishing tape. Now,
the advantage of this is that it's made of steel, I can push on it, turn it,
and hopefully I can make it come right up here.
With a piece of string attached to it,
I can grab that piece of string and pull it out.
Tighten it here, to the end of my fishing tape.
All right.
And hopefully, when it gets to the bottom I can grab it like that,
and pull it out.
And now I'm going to push the fishing tape all the way down.
Hopefully it's gonna stop right above the bottom bracket.
And there you can see my string at the very bottom,
so now I can try and bring that piece of string up with my hook.
Let's give it a try!
Unfortunately, what we saw down that seat tube
was this end of the dental floss.
So I could never get to the other side
and pull it out of the tube.
Last thing that I'm gonna try
is something that I read about and never tried it myself.
I'm gonna use the same dental floss, or a piece of thread,
try to feed it through here,
and I'm gonna use this trusty Shop-Vac vacuum,
5 horsepower worth of suction,
and hopefully I will be able to suck that thread or dental floss right up here
where I need it, since this is the only other port that's open on this frame.
Without any fittings looks like I can squeeze this right on top of my seat tube,
pulled out enough dental floss for a week,
All right, this is probably easier said than done,
since I have so much crap in the frame already.
I'll just give it a few more tries, not successful so far.
And victory guys, look at this!
I finally got it to come out the right way.
I think it was getting tangled in all the other hoses and cables
and bosses through the frame,
so now I have a clear path from my handlebar all the way to the seat post,
so I can use this to pull through either housing, or inner cable,
or anything like that that will help me run everything else.
You've seen some of my struggles,
this was the only method that worked for me.
It might be worth trying first before anything else,
because ultimately was the easiest.
But before I wrap this up I want to share a couple more hacks with you.
If you already have a cable or hose for that matter running through your frame,
and you just want to replace it,
what you might want to do is use something like this.
this is the RockShox stealth barb connector,
usually shipped with the Reverb droppers.
You use this barb to screw into the old hose,
attach it to the new hose,
and as you pull the old hose out, or cable,
you're gonna pull in the new one.
So that's a nice trick.
Also, if you don't have this connector,
a piece of the electrical heat shrink tubes
can be used to attach the two ends together.
If your bike only has inner cables going through the frame,
with the housing stopping right here at the port,
usually those ports are tiny,
and if you have an older bike,
they don't have the internal channels
for these cables to make their way out.
What you should do in that case,
you use one of these little heat shrink tubes again,
slide it over the old cable before you remove it,
and push it through all the way to the other side of the frame.
Once you have this little tube through the frame,
then you can pull your old cable out,
and now you're going to have a guide that will help you accomplish the task.
I actually did this in one of my older videos,
I'll make sure I put a link in the description for you guys.
And there you have guys!
Ultimately, it was the vacuum that saved a day for me.
What do you use when you run into situations like this?
I would love to hear from you in the comments below,
if you have any questions let me know,
Don't forget to Like and Subscribe.
As usual, I'm going to put
a lot of links in the description of the video.
and until next time,
I hope to see you guys on the trails.
Cheers guys,
Cheers!