Any Tips for threading housing through frame?

[OperaLover]

My daugher was complaining that her rear brake was getting stiff. It's a Cannondale 24 mountain bike. I thought it would be a good time to teach her a basic repair sikill. Well, it looks like there is no internal tube for the housing to pass through the TT; just an opening on either end. Any hints on theading it through?

Thank you!

[David Kirk]

Take a piece of string and feed it in one end of the frame and then put a vacuum cleaner nozzle at the other end and it will typically suck the one end of the string out.

Now with string all the way through fasten (I like tape)the string to the brake housing and pull it through.

dave

[Louis]

String and a Shop-Vac? (never had to do that myself, so I have no idea if it works)

Edit: Looks like Dave beat me to it.

Good Luck

[peanutgallery]

Shop vac? genius. That's a new one and I like it

Its one of those things that'll make you earn your keep as a wrench. Not that hard but experience and patience is the key. I used to love it when a home mechanic would bring one in and I'd thread a cable thru in seconds

I clip the ends of the cable, pull the housing out and slide the new housing over the old cable that was never pulled out of the frame and viola

Also had luck just feeding the housing (or just a plain cable) into the frame and catching it with a dental pick on the other end. Keep a little force on both ends.

When in doubt, magnets

[EricEstlund]

Along the same lines as the 2:1:2 cable/housing:cable:housing/cable method above- if you can put a little bend in a piece of cable you might have an easier time fishing that through. Twisting the end can rotate where the bend is in the frame to pop out the hole. Once its through, you can reverse new housing over it.

[nooneline]

a good way is to pull the housing out of the frame, but leave the old cable in.

then, push the new housing through, using the old cable as a guide.

then pull out the old cable and put a new one in.

[pitonpat]

That vacuum trick is the same as we do on construction sites for buried conduit:

Introduce heavy duty mason's twine into one end, shop vac at the other...voila! you have a messenger line to pull the wires!

[SoCalSteve]

This is an amazing tool:

Exactly what you are looking for (http://www.parktool.com/product/internal-cable-routing-kit-ir-1)

Good luck!

Steve

[msl819]

My daugher was complaining that her rear brake was getting stiff. It's a Cannondale 24 mountain bike. I thought it would be a good time to teach her a basic repair sikill. Well, it looks like there is no internal tube for the housing to pass through the TT; just an opening on either end. Any hints on theading it through?

Thank you!

My father in law is a dentist and I get him to pass along his dental tools (Scrapers) when they get retired. The hooks and such are great for this kind of issue and tons more. Not sure if you know a dentist but they break the ends on those tools often and they are just consumables to them.

[OperaLover]

Unfortunately, I pulled everything out. I will try the shop vac trick and I do have some dental like picks that I got from harbor freight. I only have one bike with internal routing (my Colnago) and it has an internal sleeve to guide the RR brake housing through. Funny because orignally I was just going to replace the cable and leave the old housing, but thought to myself, "that's lazy! You wouldn't half ass this if it were you own bike would you?" Plus my daughter was so into learning how to do it.

She is 10 with two brothers (13 and 8), but is the only one so far who shows a real interest in wrenching. She also keeps hinting for a "real bike" (read "road bike") so she can go really fast! Plays me like a violin that's for sure!

[pinkshogun]

i second the string and vacuum trick....works well

[Steve in SLO]

That vacuum trick is the same as we do on construction sites for buried conduit:

Introduce heavy duty mason's twine into one end, shop vac at the other...voila! you have a messenger line to pull the wires!
And if you only have compressed air, you can use a ping-pong ball with a string attached to it and blow the ping-pong ball through.
Obviously not a tip for the bike, unless you have seriously OS tubing.

[guyintense]

This is an amazing tool:

Exactly what you are looking for (http://www.parktool.com/product/internal-cable-routing-kit-ir-1)

Good luck!

Steve

They were demonstrating that at Interbike, cool tool but doesn't work too well on steel.
I drilled a hole in one end of a coat hanger and pointed the other. Just poke the hanger through the frame insert the cable in the hole and push/pull the contraption through.

[F150]

Don't know about the string and Shop Vac trick, but a Shop Vac will suck a shop rag out of the intake manifold of a 4.9L Ford truck engine, in the event you were to leave said shop rag in the intake after reattaching the rebuilt carburetor.

Or so I heard...

[Gummee]

I didn't have access to string last time I had to fish stuff thru a tube so I used dental floss. Lighter so it gets sucked thru better

HTH

M

[Louis]

a Shop Vac will suck a shop rag out of the intake manifold of a 4.9L Ford truck engine, in the event you were to leave said shop rag in the intake after reattaching the rebuilt carburetor.

No one would be stupid enough to do that!

Back when I had a '70 Impala with a 400 small block engine I was constantly messing around with the carburetor and timing, trying to get it to run better. All of a sudden one day it started to run horribly as I drove to work. I limped home and pulled the spark plugs - they were all covered with some black goo. I replaced them all and a few days later had the same problem. With some help from my buddies we concluded that it was fuel-related and running too rich, so I decided to re-build the carb. I took it apart on my kitchen table and in the process discovered a teeny bit of black rubber, most likely from the end of vacuum hose that somehow got sucked deep into the guts of the thing as I was replacing the hose during one of my tweaking the spark advance tests or some such thing.

I cleaned it all up (I think I also replaced the float, but the original one was fine) put it all back together and it ran great. Such a teeny bit of junk that caused me so much trouble. I was proud of having fixed it, but also felt like an idiot for having caused the problem in the first place.

[christian]

This is the Serotta forum. We all know a dentist.

[pitonpat]

This is the Serotta forum. We all know a dentist.

We have a winner! Post of the day!

[F150]

No one would be stupid enough to do that!



Yuh huh!

This Shop Rag was not just sucked down a runner, but found its way all the way to the front cylinder and wadded up around the intake valve. Turned crank with big wrench to max valve opening, then put the hose right on the carb base. Came right out.

[OperaLover]

Well, I tried the shop vac and had no trouble sucking the string through, but it kept slipping off the cable when I tried to pull it though. Ended up threading the cable through by feel manipulating it by keeping it close to the tube wall. Surprisingly, I got though in less than 5 minutes. I then pushed the housing through over the cable.

It's still not completely hooked up. I'm saving that for some Daddy/Daughter time this weekend.

GO HAWKS!

[Bostic]

I just went through this nightmare on my Pedal Force for the internal rear brake cable :mad:. Used the thread and vacuum, kept falling off the cable. Also tried a magnet, no go. Tried bending tip of cable, still no go. Finally with the help of my wife, bending the cable at a different angle, got it to feed through successfully. I'm going to buy some thin tubing for the next time. Fortunately the shifter cables went smoothly.