Brandon Ives wrote:
>Something that I've always wondered about is when and why folks
>switched to under the BB cable routing. I've always preferred the
>above routing since the cables are shorter and put them more out of
>the way of road grime, plus it gives the housing less bend and a
>better line to the RD. I can understand for production that
>drilling and tapping a 5m hole is much easier than soldering on two
>hard to jig tiny cable guides. I would think many of the custom
>builders would have kept it as a feature that was superior to the
>way they do production bikes. So can anyone clarify the history of
>under the BB routing and give me any good reasons to do it that way
>beyond it's easier?
I believe this is mainly a mountain bike innovation. I remember working on early MTBs that had above-the-bb routing, and having it interfere with front derailer adjustment. MTBs used smaller chainrings and big-cage, wide-range front derailers, and sometimes you couldn't get the derailer mounted low enough for good shifting without having the tail of the cage foul the rear derailer cable.
Once this became the norm for MTBs, and it became clear that it worked OK and was CHEAPER, it was a no-brainer to extend it to all derailer bikes.
This is a bit like the move from 36 to 32 spoke wheels. Usedta be that only very exotic time-trial bikes had 32. Thus, 32 spokes acquired cachet and manufacturers discoveret that they could save the cost of supplying and installing 8 spokes per bike and the customers would consider it a FEATURE! What a deal!
The same thing is driving the move to threadless headsets...the manufacturers get credit for "higher performance" and get to save considerable spondulix.
Sheldon "Spinning The Cut Corners" Brown
Newtonville, Massachusetts
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