Outers how short is too short?

wishitwasallflat
wishitwasallflat Posts: 2,927
edited February 2012 in Workshop
Hi I recently uncrossed the cables on my Spesh but now they look way to long to me. All the sites say outers should be long enough to avoid too tight turns/kinks but no one is clear on what is too tight - do these look too long and if yes any estimate on how much shorter they should be (cutting them too short would be an expensive mistake so apprecaite any advice) :D

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Comments

  • TommyEss
    TommyEss Posts: 1,855
    They do look a little baggy, but for the faff of shortening them I'd sooner keep them like that and make them a bit shorter when it comes time to change the cables, not before.
    Cannondale Synapse 105, Giant Defy 3, Giant Omnium, Giant Trance X2, EMC R1.0, Ridgeback Platinum, On One Il Pompino...
  • rolf_f
    rolf_f Posts: 16,015
    Yeah, I'd leave it until your bar tape is grubby enough to need to be changed :lol:
    Faster than a tent.......
  • turnerjohn
    turnerjohn Posts: 1,069
    one hell of a faff to chop em and as always (well with me anyway) you cut them and their then to short :twisted: ....they don't look to bad TBH
  • John.T
    John.T Posts: 3,698
    Why did you uncross them. You get a better run with them crossed which is why Spec do it in the first place.
    And they don't rub on the head tube as much. icon_biggrin.gif
  • Thanks for the replies to all - I had a problem with the rear shifting and a friend replaced the cables (which sorted the problem) and in the course of that he uncrossed them cause he thought that might have contributed to the issue. The rear now works better than it ever did and so I am more tempted to leave them uncrossed but as we changed two things it could well be that the new cable solved the issue (the old one was kinked in the outer) and the uncrossing had no real effect. (I must admit I never like the look of them crossed though but as there seems to be no consensus on whether it matters or not so I was going to leave them as they are but now am not sure about re-crossing them but felt they are too long to leave as they are = dilema :? )
    Rolf F wrote:
    Yeah, I'd leave it until your bar tape is grubby enough to need to be changed

    Nice one! Big part of the motivation to do something about this now is also as I am dying to fit the lovely new Roubaix BLACK bar tape I have waiting just out of shot ! I always hated that white tape (white tape seems an insane choice to me!) and never having wrapped before was thinking well I will sort those outers as well while it's off.

    PS - I should add they rattle a bit now which is most annoying and again is part of the motivation to shorten them.
  • jameses
    jameses Posts: 653
    If you do decide to cut them, give yourself about an inch more than you think you will need. I also didn't like the look of the tangled cables that came on my Spesh, and in the process of doing some upgrades ended up with the untangled cables all over the place, so cut them back but a couple ended up fractionally too short; fortunately still useable, but it was a close call! Looks much neater now, though.

    And I've done the same with the bar tape - white looked great when it was new, but two rides in and it was a mess. Replaced it with black!
  • rolf_f
    rolf_f Posts: 16,015
    Nice one! Big part of the motivation to do something about this now is also as I am dying to fit the lovely new Roubaix BLACK bar tape I have waiting just out of shot ! I always hated that white tape (white tape seems an insane choice to me!) and never having wrapped before was thinking well I will sort those outers as well while it's off.

    You can keep the Fizik white tape clean - but even then I think you really need to think about whether white tape is that important (I have it on my tourer which came with old style white so I like to keep it that way) - but even though it does clean up nicely, you do need to spend time cleaning it. Black just looks effortlessly smart.

    I did a little survey at a feed stop on a sportive last year - about 8 bikes had black tape and 4 white. All the black taped bikes looked smart, all the white taped bikes looked untidy - and only because the tape looked terrible!
    Faster than a tent.......
  • flasher
    flasher Posts: 1,734
    Front derailleur looks too long, otherwise it's ok. But do change that tape, very skanky!
  • Flasher wrote:
    Front derailleur looks too long, otherwise it's ok. But do change that tape, very skanky!

    Thanks - I reckoned that was the worst one - it seems so long it's being forced to loop up a bit as it emerges from under the bars.