Adding cable stops to a carbon frame is not exactly difficult, but one must follow many necessary steps in order to ensure proper and safe performance for the long haul. Tune in to find out more!
Dan: 00:00 So for today’s question on the #carbonqueries, this one comes from our friend Paul. What do you guys use to add cable guides? I tried the problem solver ones and they always come off. This is adding an external dropper post to a carbon bike. Right now I use tape around the frame to hold the guides on, but it looks bad and I want to find a better solution. Thanks. Whoa. Wait on cable guides. Tape it on. I mean there’s some strong tape out there. Some really strong tape out there.
Shawn: 00:28 Boy, the hardest part there. The reason why any off the shelf one, it’s not going to work. They’re made for a round tubes in any carbon bike. The most part. It’s not gonna be a round tube. I can’t think of a carbon mountain bike. Just as round twos. You know we do some dropper post modifications, mainly internalizing and solves it all together. If you’re putting it on externally, there aren’t that many good options. You can find cable stops and drill them out, or a hydraulic hose routing port or a hydraulic hose rack mounts for from frame building companies. A fairing industrial’s a huge aluminum one and they’re super cheap. I mean they’re like not even a dollar a piece, but there were raw aluminum. They’re meant to be welded down so it brings in all kinds of sanding the surface prep down. Yeah, I mean they glue down plenty strong because they think you’re working with like three quarters of an inch surface area, right? I mean if you’re using a strong epoxy, you, you’re looking at 3,500 pounds of terrazzo floors, so it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s not coming off isn’t enough, but the problem is it doesn’t look good and it’s hard to line up to do it. This is one.
Shawn: 01:31 It would look better than tape it, which I guess is Paul’s question, right? You know what I just did to my new basket bike because I didn’t put on hard mounted cable stops at one point because that bike original was a coaster brake, so I’ve never had a true rear brake, but since I modified the frame to put a rear hydraulic brake on to run those new Magura’s. Oh yeah. I have 3d printed, a cable stop or a hose stop that just kind of matches the curvature of the frame. Uh, I rattle canned black yet again to Montana gold, flat black. It’s good. High quality paint and um, I still taped it down but a nice thing at that point it still looks like tape, but I used our vinyl so now it looks like accent banding and I tried to match it in line with the tube.
Shawn: 02:18 That’s smart. Stylized. Yeah, it’s still taped onto, but at that point it’s not rattling. It’s on a well and it comes off of the frame and it looks like an accent. So we don’t have a good answer for this one because it’s either involved, have, you know, bonding on a part, which I would say we can do it if you want us to. I prefer that don’t. I don’t like drilling holes and riveting on because that’s a whole other podcast topic we’re going to talk about some day. Yeah. Well we have brought it up before. Yeah, do not drill. Don’t just drill. No, that’s not smart. It’s not smart bonding. Safe. And that’s my answer for everything. Yeah. Is there a good epoxy that we can recommend? Some pretty well known in the bike industry is 3Ms, DP420. That’s our work horse as well.
Shawn: 03:01 It’s got some of the best properties. There’s a lot of other loctite or Hysoll brands that are obviously comparable. I’m sourcing unit. We have a direct relationship, but like yeah, it’s not easy to put a dropper post on. No. You know, I’d say every frame is so unique. There’s no general solution without, you know, our general solutions, we can strip that part of the frame. Paint a cable stop or I keep saying a hose stop
Dan: 03:27 what do we call them? Guidestar, guidestar or guide. Put it on that way. Yeah, but again, it brings up the issue if you are going to bond something, the whole surface prep thing is also very important. Properly prepped, making sure the part is properly prepped. Mixtures, no grease on anything.
Shawn: 03:45 Well, and we’ll get into some other episode of the intricacies of bonding to aluminum because there’s a oxide layer on there and that oxide layer. Oh, it shears real fast. Real fast. You may do all the right bonding. Prep that oxide layer. It’s not holding anything super weak. Yeah.
Dan: 04:03 So Paul, it’s definitely more of an intricate question. There’s no real good way to put on cable guides i
Shawn: 04:10 If you need to internalize. We just, we’ve done a good number of them. We just did nine her last week. We seem to do about one of those a month already picking up. We don’t really advertise it, but it was good. I’ve internalized online, get everything inside the bike trail and we did that, uh, that specialized, that full suspension mountain bike eternal on December. Yeah. Internalize everything looks awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Let us know. We can definitely help out there. It’s a little more involved. I know it’s definitely you have to get the bike to us, but you know, if the customer is really keen on running a clean setup to good way to go, it’s not that expensive. What do we charge 200 bucks? That’s not bad. No. And that involves all the labor and routing. So.
Dan: 04:48 So there’s a couple options for you, Paul, as you heard tape works, there’s also a way to bond on. Obviously there are some intricacies there. And then third and finally, feel free to reach out to us if you ever want to internalize everything and will you be more than happy to help you out? Or I can show you my three d printed pretty vinyl trick. Oh yeah. For options or option or options for people it looks, it looks fine. I would say that’s the $15 option, plus plus shipping and handling and three d printer. Oh, that’s why you need becoming great. Yup. Great. Okay. Thanks. Thanks Paul. Thanks. Well.