You may not give it much thought, but your derailleur housing plays an important role in the quality of shifting of your bike. For the most part, standard derailleur housings all look the same but it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Most housings hide a jacket of linear metal strands under a plastic outer shell that makes the housing stand up to compression. Without it, every shift would slowly squeeze the two ends together and make for mushy, inconsistent shifting.
While those metal strands make the housing effective, they also add the most significant portion of weight. Which gave Jagwire an idea. That idea turned into their new XEX-SL housing which claims to cut the weight in half while keeping all of the same performance…
Compared to a standard housing like the LEX-SL above in black, the new XEX-SL uses a braided wire strand to cut down on the number of strands needed while still remaining compressionless. Jagwire says that the XEX-SL has al the same performance characteristics of their best housings and includes a lubed cable liner, but it comes in at half the weight.
Now sold with their Pro Kits which include their polished Pro cables and XEX-SL housing for $35, the housing will also be available in 50m shop rolls. Not shown, Jagwire was also introducing a new addition to their cable line up with their new Pro cable. Having gotten away from coated cables, the Pro cable is electro polished like their Elite, just not quite to the same degree. That keeps the price to $12.50 and they will be available in Campy or Shimano heads in single packs, and 50 cable shop rolls in Shimano heads.
If you’re looking for replacement brake pads in an organic flavor, Jagwire will now have those as well. Their first true organic pad, Jagwire says they previously kept it to semi-metallic but had enough requests for a full organic that it made sense to offer it. Organic pads usually offer quieter stopping, though they tend to wear faster. The pads join the Sport Semi Metallic, Pro Semi Metallic, and Pro Extreme Sintered for their pad line up and are available now.
In addition to being a pretty rad build of the new Surly Fat Dummy, this Jagwire special also held a clue to what comes next in terms of rotors. The bike was fitted with Jagwire’s forthcoming two piece rotors which we’re told will be launched with their cooling rotors mid year.
