Hi team,
I cannot for the life of me using housing or a cable routing guide or a shifter cable get around the corner near the bottom bracket where the shifter housing enters the rear swing arm on the drive side.
Even when using two cable routing kits of opposite polarizations can I get the magnets to connect.
When I try to use housing it just gets stuck and during my original build it took a lot of elbow grease to force it through.
What is inside the frame that is making it damn near impossible to get this cable around the bend? Or can you provide further tips to assist?
Hey Steven,
I’d suggest reaching out to Ibis about this matter. It’s quite possible that there’s a minor blockage/fault in there that’s preventing smooth cable routing. Ibis are normally rather easy to work on, so the struggle suggests something isn’t quite right.
I asked Ibis!
They got back to me with the following:
Hi Steven,
Thank you for taking the time to reach out today.
We have to strike a fine line between easy cable installation and cable rattle. As a result, the housing is tight in a few spots to reduce noise.
After prolonged use dirt and grit can build up in the housing tunnels and should be cleared out to make housing installation easier. If you have an air compressor, I would recommend blowing out that hole. Also you could try a PB blaster or some sort of penetrating oil to clear out the housing tunnels. Before installing the new housing, coat it with a thin layer of bicycle grease to help lubricate the tunnels. This should hopefully allow the housing to slide into the frame a bit easier. It will also help ease cable removal!
Give that a go and let us know if it helps!
Happy Trails,
Chuck
The magic trick was a mix of water, penetrating oil and the air compressor to clean out the housing guide in the frame as the dirt was so dense and dry it had blocked the passage!
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Great response from Ibis.
I can also recommend some very small bottle brushes for this task. And in extreme cases (and where the angles allow), I’ve even used things like drill bits to cut through the hardened clumps of dirt.
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CamelBak provide a perfect brush in their cleaning kit - small, long & flexible bottle brush type brush head on a long metal handle. You could probably clean a full-length hose lining with it!
I can confirm this is the perfect tool for this job. I had the same issue as the original poster with my significant other’s Ibis Ripley and had to go through a process of breaking up the bigger crustier chunks with a pick and drill bits (used by hand) and then finished off the job using the camelbak hose brush with soapy water before finally drying it with an air compressor. The Ibis design is in the perfect orientation to collect a lot of crud right at the bend of the cable path by the BB. I was amazed how much dirt came out of there. Now any time I need to pull one of the hoses from the rear swing arm I make sure to clean the cable tunnel really well before even trying to run a new cable/hose.
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