Before we even get involved in this post, one thing is clear; stainless steel cables are vastly superior to regular steel. I’ve used stainless exclusively for more than a decade and would only go back, temporarily, in the case of an emergency.

I developed a shifting issue with my Trek 5200 (1999). The bike would shift up the cassette but not down, and vice-versa with a slight adjustment at the barrel adjuster. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

This means one of two things (and maybe four more.: a kink in the cable (or frayed cable, usually at the end inside the shifter), or there’s drag somewhere in the system. With Shimano cables and housings, it’s that latter issue that becomes a difficult to diagnose problem. The coating they use in the housing can become balled and gummed up and cause friction betwixt the cable and housing. Friction is bad. After years of flawless shifting in my Trek 5200, it finally showed signs of gumming. Shifting was okay, but that drag was there, and I didn’t like it.

I know when I’ve hit that point where it’s just going to be a pain in the butt to keep trying to dial the shifting in correctly, so rather than mess with it any further, I took a piece of housing from the Jagwire set I bought for my ’03 5200 rework and changed it out. Flawless shifting returned again!

Even knowing the issues with Shimano housings, I opted for the equipment because I wanted the bike to have a 100% Shimano drivetrain from tip to tail. It just seemed like a cool idea after years of smashing Shimano and SRAM parts together (SRAM chains and cassettes, Shimano everything else). The all-Shimano setup worked great for years (we don’t have to change drivetrains every couple of years like you folks in the UK). Sadly, time isn’t kind to Shimano housings.

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