Cables. The Good the Bad and the Ugly.

I take personal offence to badly cabled bikes. It's a crime against cycling. Done poorly, cables can make an amazing bike look terrible and done well can make almost any bike look brilliant. All too often cabling is completely overlooked... and that is one of the few things in cycling that makes me angry. #crimesagainstcabling

MIKE BOUDRIE

Offensive. You could get your leg stuck in there. #crimesagainstcabling

Sram you are awesome. Wireless means only two cables on the bike... Dear Sram please make wireless brakes... Shimano, you're also not so bad, my Di2 equiped bike looks close to cable-less. just a few sneaky cables here and there. And now, with new Dura-Ace Di2 arriving with it's bar end junction box, things just got even better. Campag, I look forward to seeing your improvements in 10 years time.

BUT, and it's a huge BUT, dear bike manufacturers, you need to try harder. I just had the pleasure, or pain, of comparing a Giant TCR straight out the box (cover photo) versus one that had had all the cables pulled out and started again (below). It's amazing what a difference it made. So please Giant, and others, try harder please. You manufacturing Giants can surely do a better job at the factory end, right?

This is what happens when a good mechanic gets their hand on a poorly cabled bike. 

To make matters worse, here in Australia we are blatantly discriminated against... we're forced against our will to live with awkward cable routing due to our right hand braking that is designed for left hand braking callipers. Only our fellow RHBs (right hand brakes) in the UK suffer the same horror. It's outrageous! It's discriminatory! 

Cable care. Glorious.

Luckily there are some great bike shops out their with mechanics that will obsess for hours over how to make your bike look at good as it can. These are the ones to find. They're not focused on pumping out as many bikes as possible, they are the ones that love what they do and won't stop until they've found a better way. We put the call-out on social media for some triumphs of cabling, and boy were we impressed at the work coming out of Studio de Velo!

Studio de Velo know how it's done. Sent in by Simon Sirotti

So, thank you cable and build obsessed bike shops, thank you for spending three plus hours building my bike when you could have done it in 30 minutes... and dear pump them out shops, please spend a few more minutes to bring beauty to all of our worlds.

Anyway... I want to know where these loving bike shops are. Essendon Cyclery is my favourite local. Tell us your cabling best so we can give these everyday heroes the kudos they deserve.