Take note Specialized

People who visit Mtbr may have read my various posts on down tube cable routing, I hate it. If it was just the front derailleur cable it would be more direct but if it’s all three cables then it’s considerably less direct so there are no advantages to DT routing what so ever. When it gets dusty or muddy the DT looks a real mess, it makes the bike harder to clean and eventually the dust and mud scratches the cables and DT. In addition to that it puts cables directly in the line of fire from rocks, roots and grounding the bike...I’m sure no one wants to loose a hydraulic brake line in the middle of an all day ride. Some manufacturers are still doing really stupid things like using unsealed open gear cables under the DT. Specialized uses DT cable routing on nearly all of their bikes and I can tell you it was a real pain on my Stumpjumper, apart from the unreliability of the bike that was the second most important reason to ditch it. I still dislike DT routing but this post is aimed to show how it’s done properly. Lapierre are known for attention to detail so here are some neat improvements to cable routing for 2009. For a start the cables don’t go under the BB, they’re wrapped tightly over the BB. Secondly a clear sticky film now covers the DT to make sure it doesn’t get scratched badly like older Zesty’s. Thirdly Lapierre have used some seriously cool cable guides that don’t pinch the cables like the ones found on Specialized bikes.

Note the washing instructions…

4 comments:

ukalipt said...

scott seem to have it right as well. they use a small "container" to house the cabling together nice and tightly. not as fancy as that anodised red no. but still well executed

LordOnOne said...

Good lord man! You’ve got blogs everywhere!

Just looked at your Scale on Flickr. The cable routing seems really good, IMO under the top tube is the best place for it and the container thing is one of the better ways of holding cables I’ve seen.

I must get myself a ride on the new Genius, I’ve been itching to try it for ages :)

ukalipt said...

lol. all roads [blogs] lead to one place. originally blogger but being a design nazi i needed to move everything to the one kingdom that i could control better... my own domain.

the scale is pretty much 99% sorted in all ways as a hard tail thorough bread racing machine. the years of development everything is tight as with the only issue [the 1% off 100%] being the seatpost being 34.9 size. just hard that little bit more difficult to find clamps and post to fit it.

although justin was complaining about the size of the cable tie eyelets on his scale. he said they were too small and only allowed for crappy plastic cable ties.

LordOnOne said...

I always find it strange when a company as big as Scott believes so strongly in a standard and yet doesn’t do a simple thing like design a light, strong and reliable range of seat clamps to go with it. If Scott made a decent job of it they could make a killing just like Hope…

Finally tired the Genius a couple of days ago. I’ve got to say that I didn’t get along with the ride position and general feel of the old Genius and wasn’t expecting there to be much difference with the new one. Turns out the ride position on the new one is one of the best I’ve tried, it’s much longer and slacker and yet it’s just as fast as the old one. The suspension is butter smooth front and back but it does have a rather annoying knock as the rear shock tops out at the end of the rebound.