Picked cable housing vs. just replacing the cables on a 90s mountain bike

Was rebuilding an old Stumpjumper last week and went with full Jagwire housing instead of reusing the original stuff. Had anyone else found that the new housing makes shifting way smoother or was I just lucky?

2 comments

2 Comments

knight.diana14d ago

Wait, did you go with the full housing or just the outer stuff? I did the same thing on my old Trek 930 and YES, it Made a HUGE difference. The old housing was all kinked and crusty, and swapping to fresh Jagwire basically fixed all my shifting problems overnight. You weren't lucky at all, it's just that old housing gets compressed and sticky over time, especially on 90s bikes that sat in a garage for decades.

abby_henderson14d ago

I read somewhere that old housing from the 90s actually had a different liner material inside, something like nylon or maybe even just plain plastic. That stuff gets brittle and develops micro-cracks after like 25 years in the sun, which is why you get that sticky feeling even if the cable itself looks fine. I've seen people rebuild entire drivetrains and still have crap shifting until they finally swap the housing out. It's honestly kind of wild how much a few bucks of jagwire can fix a bike that feels totally dead.