Following their collaboration with SRAM to produce the Professional Derailleur Cable set for road bikes, Gore Ride-On has created a similar, partially sealed system for road bike brakes. For the mountain bike crowd, they’ve created a small cable set that will work with both suspension fork lockouts and cable-actuated drop seat posts. Presumably, this means it’ll work with cable driven rear shock lockouts as well.
The road brake cable set differs from traditional road brake sets in several ways. The obvious is the sealed aspect that runs between the housing sections (details and photos of how this works is after the break). The non-obvious is that they used thinner 4mm housing versus the 5mm housing on their traditional, fully sealed mountain bike systems.
Then, they used straight wires inside the cable housing rather than the typical wound wires found in standard brake cable housing. Traditionally, brake cable housing uses wound wires and shift cable housing uses straight wires. The wound wire inside brake housing prevents expansion as the brake lever is pulled hard, which you’d feel as cable compression. To prevent cable compression (or outward expansion), Gore wound the straight wire with kevlar fibers. The result is a semi-sealed cable set that weighs 20g to 30g less than their fully sealed system (which we reviewed here) and within a few grams of traditional housing but with the added benefit of some weather resistance.
Check out how it works, plus photos and details of the shock lockout cable system, after the break…
Like the road cable sets, the brake sets are available in red, blue, white and black. They retail for $64.99 per set, which will do both front and rear brakes. For 2011, Gore has drastically reduced the amount of packaging they use; sets will no longer use the plastic clamshell inside the box and the box width is about half what it used to be. It may not look as pretty when you open it up, but you’ll be giving the earth a tiny hug.
From end to end, here’s what a road brake set looks like. Here’s how it works and interfaces with your bike:
The top of the cable has a flexible wound bit to facilitate installation under the bar tape at the highly curved part of the bar. It converts to their straight wire/kevlar wound colored housing before it emerges.
The first seal starts at the end of the first housing section. Their clear cable cover is pre-installed on the first ferrule.
The rear housing section (for rear brakes) has a ferrule with a snout on it. Place that in your bike and cut the clear cover to end about 5mm in front of it. Then cut the housing sections to length, slide the cable through and slip the grub seal (black rubbery thing in the pic above) over the gap between the clear cover and the ferrule snout and you’ve effectively sealed out crud and water from entering your cable system.
The final exit for the cable does not have a seal. For most road riding, the central section should prevent most crap from gumming up your cables, and the specially lubricated housings and Gore coated cables will feel super smooth. How do I know? Because I just installed a set on my bike (along with shifter cables):
White is tight!
At this point you might be thinking “Dang, that looks tight, but $65 for a set of cables? CRAY-zee!”
To which I would respond: “They’re slick as snot, and with both the brake and derailleur system I just installed, there was enough housing left over on each to replace one full section should they become contaminated…so you kinda get a little extra for a future partial install. And those clear cable cover bits can easily be flushed out with water if they get contaminated. Based on our experience with the mountain bike derailleur systems, they’ll last you far longer with better performance than typical cables, so you’re probably coming out the same or better over the long haul.”
GORE RIDE-ON SUSPENSION REMOTE LEVER SYSTEM CABLESET
The remote suspension cable system uses the same coated cable and specially lubed housing as their shifter systems, including the 1.1mm cable and 4mm housing, and that’s essentially the benefit to the system over traditional cables…it’s going to be super slick and comparatively friction free. For drop posts and rear shocks in particular, which typically have full housing runs from start to finish, this could make them a lot easier to activate/release.
It’ll work with any drop seatpost, fork or shock that uses cable actuation to control lockout or travel.
The suspension lockout system is available July 1, 2010, comes in black or white and retails for $22.99.
