Shimano SIS outer.

[cycleruk]

I have a cable outer that is printed SIS but is spiral wound. I assumed that SIS printed outers would just be for gear shifting. Usually indexing gear outers are parallel wired - right or wrong ?

[keyboardmonkey]

Is this relevant..?

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=129201&p=1342302#p1342175

[kylecycler]

I have a cable outer that is printed SIS but is spiral wound. I assumed that SIS printed outers would just be for gear shifting. Usually indexing gear outers are parallel wired - right or wrong ?

I bought SIS cable outers from the LBS that turned out to be spiral wound. It was for restoring an early '80s Raleigh Wisp mixte whose original gear cable outers were the same diameter as its brake cable outers and I needed SIS cable that would fit the cable stops. I thought the same as you, that all SIS cables were parallel wired, but evidently not. If it says SIS, though, it will be only for gears, not brakes, but I guess you know that.

I wasn't able to fit ferrules - there were no ferrules on the original brake or gear cables (and AFAICT they were the originals) - with ferrules the outers were too wide. I've since found out that you can get 'stepped' ferrules (from SJS Cycles) to fit into the older style cable stops and which were obviously the right solution - there are two sizes:

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/cables/jagw ... pack-of-4/
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/cables/jtek ... pack-of-4/

Parallel wired outers wouldn't work without ferrules, or at least they might to begin with but soon wouldn't. Modern regular SIS cables, even with ferrules, were too narrow for the Wisp's cable stops. As it was, the spiral bound SIS gear outers seemed to work fine without ferrules, although like I said the stepped ferrules were the proper solution.

The Wisp only ever had friction shifting so I don't know how the cables would have worked out with indexed shifting (although as I was able to put a 6-speed freewheel on it I could easily enough have replaced the friction stem shifters with indexed 6-speed shifters), but I suspect it would have been ok. The new cabling certainly made the friction shifts slicker.

[Brucey]

I've seen all sorts, including bikes which were (from new) cabled up with parallel strand reinforced outer in the gear runs except for the loop to the RD.

I've mentioned this before but jagwire make stepped ferrules that allow 5.0mm housing to fit into cable stops that also have a 5.0mm diameter. Because the end of the ferrule is solid (for at least 7mm length), this type of ferrule can be turned down to fit any cable stop

cheers

[kylecycler]

I've seen all sorts, including bikes which were (from new) cabled up with parallel strand reinforced outer in the gear runs except for the loop to the RD.

I've mentioned this before but jagwire make stepped ferrules that allow 5.0mm housing to fit into cable stops that also have a 5.0mm diameter. Because the end of the ferrule is solid (for at least 7mm length), this type of ferrule can be turned down to fit any cable stop

cheers

I think that was my problem, Brucey - the cable outer without a ferrule was the same diameter as the internal diameter of the cable stop, probably 5.0mm. I might have linked to the wrong ones above but what you've described is what I was looking for (without turning them down).

Some day soon I'll get around to rebuilding my old Carlton 531 Ten, currently just a frame and fork so it will be from scratch, and I guess these outers and the stepped ferrules you've described will be what I'll be looking for.

[cycleruk]

Thanks for all the comments.
Yes I bought a set of cables from Chain Reaction a while ago and it probably is the one in question.
I fitted it at the rear to replace the rear mech' part. Tried it and you could see it move and compress when changing gear. It compressed that much that the dérailleur didn't even move. So I adjusted and tightened the inner to pre-compress the outer which allowed the gears to change.
So out on the bike and the gears changed but not perfectly. Now fitted a parallel type SIS outer and gears are a lot better. As noted above the 2 types are a different diameter with the spiral type being slightly larger.
Something to look out for next time I order gear cables.