STI brake cable

[meic]

Do I have to remove the STI levers to change the brake cable inners.
SORA Flightdecks. How is it done?

[georgew]

You should find it here. As I remember there is a small plastic lid on the body which has to be removed to gain access.

http://www.parktool.com/repair/

[CJ]

I've just answered a similar question from a member:

With any lever where the cables run under the bar tape, i.e. ALL drop handlebar brake levers since about 1985, there’s a risk that as soon as you withdraw the old cable, the end of the casing will spring out of alignment with the hole in the base of the lever down which you’ll try to poke the new one.

Ideally the casing will be a snug enough fit in its socket that this does not happen and/or the hole big enough that the cable end, with a bit of fiddling around, can be persuaded to find the smaller hole in the end of the casing. Then just push it through and voila!

This is not usually a problem with a new cable, where the free end is perfectly formed, but a used or cut end may tend to spread its strands in an unhelpful manner and jam somewhere between the hole in the base of the lever and the end of the casing – as you have no doubt discovered! In that case you have to un-tape the handlebars, extract the outer casing, feed the cable firstly through the lever and separately into the casing. Then poke the casing end back into its socket (make sure it’s a snug fit this time and wrap a bit of PVC tape around it until it is), re-secure to the bars and re-apply the padded tape. (If the old tape is unwrapped carefully and not damaged already I find it is normally possible to re-use it.)

Another thing that tends to mess up this process is when the brake lever position is disturbed either by a crash or careless handling of the bike, or by deliberate adjustment after the handlebars have been taped. This tends to move the lever body relative to the casing, which is now trapped under the handlebar tape, causing a separation and possibly some misalignment between the casing end and its socket, so that a new cable does not feed easily from one straight into the other. In some cases this can also cause significant friction and reduce brake performance. Vulnerability to this particular problem is the one significant disadvantage of concealed cables on touring bikes, which may well suffer rough handling in transit between home and tour.

But even in the worst case, the dismantling is not all that drastic (no need to remove or even loosen the lever from the handlebar) requiring only a roll of PVC (electrical) insulating tape to make good afterwards. When it comes to replacing a broken cable in the middle of nowhere, provided the casing end was made a snug fit in the lever base when the bike was assembled and not subsequently displaced, and provided you do not cut the new cable to length until after it has been threaded through, that process should normally be quite simple.

I hope you'll also find something useful in that.

[meic]

Thanks to both of you.
Now I have to do it but it sounds easier than I feared and it is nice to know you are doing the right thing even if it doesnt seem to be working.