Weight Weenies

264g will be for a full cableset before installation. Ie cutting to size. The FWB comparison is a like for like.

The biggest saving for Campag / Shimano is to replace the brake cables. Using Alligator saves 30g. Bear in mind you can keep the original cables and reuse them on a another bike (eg winter bike).

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The listing says it's cut for a medium/large bike which is why I assumed that weight was correct. Thanks for all the input.

standard shimano cables/housing to AICAN bungarus was about 80-90g savings for me. Not bad for about $90.
As an aside, start an introduction page with your bike build and everybody will be more than happy to make cost-effective suggestions to drop your bike weight.

Check out Niro-Glide cable sets. They come with bowden housing but its made of alum' not steel.
I think it works out to be almost the same weight as Aican Bungurus housing but cheaper.

edit: Niro brake housing ~= 28.9g/m. Ilinks~= 31.7g/m
Niro shift housing ~=17.6g/m Bungarus ~=17.5g/m

Any idea for a USA friendly place o get niro glide? The couple of mail order houses I've found are more to ship than he cables cost.

No. I just ordered some from HS (German I think) and I had to get the full sets and pay for shipping.
Its a a little annoying when you can see a site in England that sells the housing by the metre for next to nothing but they wont post overseas.
Maybe Jason should consider stocking it.

I've been using Niro for while. It was combined with PC and steel cables as well.
Dlr set came to 34g, brake to 44g (with PC).

Somehow it worked quite good for my liking. Somehow cos recently I put the Niro on the new frame (the housing, which was in use as my first set).
Dlrs were over the place. There was no way to make them working properly, even with steel cables.
Not surprise, looking at the part of housing, the one going to the rear dlr, when the shifter was puling the cable, the housing was moving sideways like a snake.

Another thing, the brake housing. Kept between two fingers when pulling the lever you could feel how it shrinks itself.

Very mixed feelings for me.
But as a result, after the recent experience I gave up on it.

Hi,

No. I just ordered some from HS (German I think) and I had to get the full sets and pay for shipping.

The only place I know of where you can buy the outer shifter cable as meterware is R2bike.de (dark grey or white finnish)
All others are full sets, inner cables only or rolls of 50m in a cardboard dispenser.

@1415chris: those movements you observed are to be expected with aluminium iso steel. It's probably wise to replace these much earlier than regular steel ones.
But hey, no such thing as a free lunch, right?

Ciao,

mattyb95 wrote:The listing says it's cut for a medium/large bike which is why I assumed that weight was correct. Thanks for all the input.

Use the FWB weights. The Campag cables in the packet I've just weighed are approx 250g. Shimano is a similar weight.

@1415chris

How long / many miles had you been using it?

Ok, just my opinion here and keep in mind that my brake cables are iLinks as I had them left over from when I upgraded my mtb to hydro's and my der's are Jag Wires. If you have the money to spend on new cables, lets say Jag Wires and your current cables are working just fine, I would consider upgrading something else. No point in changing something that aint broke at the moment.

With that said, lets say you had about $100 to spend. You could consider picking up a lighter seat post, maybe a KCNC or even a Hylix (depends on post diameter but in my case-27.2 and both weigh in at about 130g and cost under $100)

Tires/tubes as you mentioned is another great place because we are talking about rotational mass here and is actually probably one of the better places to start.

I swapped my cables out to the iLinks and didn't feel anything different at all. Dare I say, a bit of a waste of time. To me, I think swapping to a lighter set of cables should be left until after you have done some of the larger items. Ones that have a more significant weight reduction. For me, the first thing that went were the bottle cages that came with my bike. I dropped 138g by going to a carbon version for the pair. Not that the carbon ones were super light in comparison to some that are out there (just Specialized ones that weigh in at 20g ea) but the ones that came on it were made of lead I think!

They aren't lieing about the rattling. I had them on my mtb and it was horrible. I had little pieces of velcro tape (the soft side) stuck all over the place to add some sound deadening and to prevent rubbing.

fdegrove wrote:It's probably wise to replace these much earlier than regular steel ones.
But hey, no such thing as a free lunch, right?

Ciao,

Yep, your right. Should have mentioned that I'd had two sets of this housing.
But with the regular, more often housing replacements, using PC hits your wallet to the extend that I had to say enough is enough.
For WW build, hard to bit indeed, but durability very questionable.

Looking for the weight savings I've stolen Mini I link from my mtb
The whole set (with PC) is 3-4 grams heavier than Niro-PC set.
And because it was in use on my other bike for longer time, it's already passed the "shrinking" stage. Something that you can experience when the Mini is taken straight out of the box.

@585 I really don't remember the exact number, but it was about 6k miles on two Niro housing sets.

I understand the shooting for the number on a budget. I think it is a fun challenge to build a light bike with going crazy with the money.

I will be interested if you get anymore information on the cables. I think the cable thing is hard to find information about. It also seems there are conflicting stories about the real world functionality of some of these systems.

On the lightening of the bike topic, maybe list your components and then getting suggestions on what to swap out for the biggest savings for the least amount of money. You might be surprised what you pick up in the classifieds for a discount that will get you to your target weight.

I swaped my campy brake cables for ilinks. saved like 30-40 grams. I didn't change just for the weight saving, but for the feedback.

ilinks are much stiffer than the campy so the braking is much better now. better modulation and feeling.

Shifting I kept the original campy cables because they work so well. I find its not worth messing with those. I prefer having perfect shifting than saving a couple of grams.

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