How to Cut a Bike's Cable Housing

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Jeff at the Two-Wheeler Dealer. Today, I'm going to show you how to cut your cable housing to the proper length. And I'm going to demonstrate this with the rear derailer housing. Shift housing and brake housing both use different kinds of housing. For this demonstration, I'm going to be using the shift housing. So, I'm going to be using a cable cutter. The difference between shift and brake housing is shift housing has longitudinal strands of cable that require a cable cutter. Brake housing is coil wound so you'd use just a pair of diagonal cutters or dikes to cut that type of housing. To determine the proper length, you just take a piece of housing and you're going to run it without the cable installed into both of the cable stops. And looking for a good bend, a nice smooth curve and that you have full range of motion in the handle bars, without anything binding. So, right there seems about good. Then just take some cutters and I'm going to snip a little off here and then. These housings have an inner liner, it's like a piece of straw, you have to open that up with just something sharp and pointy, this being a dental pick or a scribe, and just make sure that inner liner is opened up. And then you're going to put on proper end caps. Once that's cut to the right length, you can feed your cable in. On this particular one, it just goes straight through the side here and out over here. It has to be shifted all the way into the smallest gear to do this. Once you get the cable run through, you just feed it through your housing, under the bottom bracket guide. And then for this rear derailer piece, same type of thing, you're just looking for a nice smooth curve, no real sharp bends. Something right about like that. And then just feed your cable in and with the derailer shifted all the way down into the cog, same as the shifter, I'm just going to reattach that cable. And you just want to pull it tight without giving it excess tension. And that's how you'd replace your derailer cable and housing."