As light as I links but half the price!

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craigtheduck
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by craigtheduck

Well very very nearly!
I have been meaning to post this for a while but have only just gotten round to it.
I bought a Niro Glide cableset from bike24 around 8 months now and have been using them since, rain or shine and they are still as good as new. These cables are essentially the same design as you standard cableset however, whereas steel wire is normally used in the casing these use aluminium thus making them much lighter and more flexible.

Niro Glide turbo Plus:

Image

When I installed them i took a load of photos of weights and noted down lengths ect. I have since lost the post it with all this on so after a rummage though my spare parts bin i have found some of the left over lengths of gear and shifter outer cabling.

Here is 83cm of brake cable:

Image

so that makes it:

Niro Glide Turbo Plus Brake: 28.9g/m

I also had 2x54cm lengths of gear cable left (incidentally thats just enough to do a second bike minus the RD and thats with 46cm bars and an xl frame!)

sorry about the sidewaysness
Image

So that equals,

Niro Glide Turbo Plus Shifter: 17.6g/m

I recently got a hold of some i links and i link minis and weighting those in a similar manner (i wont post pics as im sure we all know what they look like) and those came to 25.3g/m and 12g/m respectively. this was for the outer aluminium only so without the plastic inner part.
In a previous post bikey (see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=78656&hilit=i+links&start=30) listed the weights of several different cablesets including the i links and i link minis with the plastic and the weights are below. I have also added the Niro glides.

BRAKE:
Tune "plastic"5mm: 18g/m
Tune "plastic" 6mm : 21.5g/m
Alligator i-Links: 27g/m
Niro Glide Turbo Plus: 28.9g/m
Tune "Aluminum" : 37g/m
Nokon (Aluminium outer+Liner): 38,1g/m
Powercordz: 45g/m
Jagwire: 50g/m
Shimano: 53.0g/m
Gore Ride-on: 54g/m
Gore: 57g/m
Shimano XTR : 58.5g/m

SHIFT:
Gleitec U3 : 12.5g/m (not available anymore)
Alligator Mini i-Links(outer Aluminium+Liner): 15,5g/m
Niro Glide Turbo Plus: 17.6g/m
Tune "plastic": 18/m
Shimano SP81 Yumeya: 23g/m
Gore Ride-on light (without inner Liner!): 23g/m
Alligator i-Links (outer Aluminium+Liner): 27g/m
Jagwire: 32.0g/m
Shimano SIS : 34.0g/m
Nokon Carbon (Carbon outer+Liner): 35,1g/m
Transfil "flying snake": 36g/m
Nokon (Aluminium outer+Liner): 38,1g/m
Powercordz: 39g/m
Gore Ride-on: 54g/m

So there you have it, at a estimate I would put Niro Glides as being 6g heavier for a full road setup than an i link/mini set. and lighter than the standard non mini set.

Also for you budgetweenies these are about half the price!!

But sadly its not all roses. Firstly there is the colour, or lack of it. It isn't as if its even just black, they are more a dark grey colour. its close enough to black no the bother me too much but for all you Blingweenies its a no-no.
Secondly and more importantly this is what happened to my left shifter cable shortly after install:

Image

To be fair to the cable, the routing through my bottom bracket is less than ideal with a fair amount of leaver force normally being required. Secondly it may be I managed to kink the cable somehow during install and as it wasn't being held down by any bar tape at the time it just bent.
Either way luckily, as I said before, there was plenty of spare cable so i just removed the dodgy piece and replaced it, this time wrapping the cable along its full length in electrical tape before wrapping on the bar tape. Since then it has worked flawlessly without a hint of kinking or breakage, shifting is just as good as other cables and breaking works just great. So my guess it was just unlucky.

In conclusion, i am hoping to build up a new bike soon and chances are I will be using these again!

by Weenie


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ferrarista
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by ferrarista

very nice post! I din't know about these. I was thinking about changing my campy brake cables for i-links, but I think

i'm gonna go with these instead. Light and looks like stock which I like. The shift cables will stay campy since they work and are light enough.

by the way , they are available in black, white, blue and red from what I found online.

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micky
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by micky

Looks very interesting but they dont use teflon, right?

ferrarista
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by ferrarista

micky wrote:Looks very interesting but they dont use teflon, right?


no idea. it doesn't say. they just say they are low friction and last 200 000 travels.
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ferrarista
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by ferrarista

I also checked on a german website and they say they are compatible for shimano and sram, not campy. I imagine its just the cables. i'm sure we can use campy compatible cables with the housings.
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TheRedMantra
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by TheRedMantra

Sorry to nitpick... but how can you conclude a weight that is more precise than your scale measures? If your scale is +-1g then your data should be as well. Obviously we are talking about trivial amounts of mass here, but I couldn't let that slide :smartass:

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BeeSeeBee
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by BeeSeeBee

TheRedMantra wrote:Sorry to nitpick... but how can you conclude a weight that is more precise than your scale measures? If your scale is +-1g then your data should be as well. Obviously we are talking about trivial amounts of mass here, but I couldn't let that slide :smartass:


Because he's normalizing his weighed sections to one meter (and in the math, the decimals show up). It's obviously not as accurate as using a more precise scale and extrapolating from there, but I don't see anything wrong with what he's doing.

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craigtheduck
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by craigtheduck

I Know I dont know what I was thinking with all those decimals :wink:
But granted they are not the most accurate scales (although pretty good) but will hopefully give people a good idea of the weight.

As for campy, i would assume so, I haven't tried but there seems to be nothing fancy about these housings. i have used sram cables and they fitted fine.

p.s. thanks for the info on the colours, these will defiantly be on my next bike!!

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eigner
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by eigner

Thanks for the informative post.
My opinion though:
Yea, they are about as light and half the price, but: The iLinks looks SO much better. I dont know how your niro shift, but iLinks shift superb! Also iLInks are very easy to get to the correct length - and you can add and remove links as nesessary. To be honest I dont care about the 20$ price difference when iLinks looks (and shifts?) so much better...
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ferrarista
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by ferrarista

eigner wrote:Thanks for the informative post.
My opinion though:
Yea, they are about as light and half the price, but: The iLinks looks SO much better. I dont know how your niro shift, but iLinks shift superb! Also iLInks are very easy to get to the correct length - and you can add and remove links as nesessary. To be honest I dont care about the 20$ price difference when iLinks looks (and shifts?) so much better...


well some people just want easy to setup cables and lightweight. measure , cut , install. just like stock. It will take you much less time to setup than nokon or ilinks hands down. I want my cables to be the least visible as possible. i-links are nice , but if your talking about looks, nokon are nicer I find. But taste is something personal. what is nice to someone may be ugly to another.
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prendrefeu
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by prendrefeu

These are an interesting alternative to iLinks or Nokons, however one of the benefits of both iLinks and Nokons are their ability to have tight bends in the cable without affecting shifting/braking qualities. Is that the case with these, or do they suffer the same attributes are traditional housing styles?
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odin99
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by odin99

interesting. might give them a try next time.

odin99
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by odin99

oh and where did you find the colored ones online?

ferrarista
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by ferrarista

odin99 wrote:oh and where did you find the colored ones online?


found them here: http://www.rczbikeshop.com/default/manufacturer/niro-glide
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by Weenie


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ferrarista
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by ferrarista

prendrefeu wrote:These are an interesting alternative to iLinks or Nokons, however one of the benefits of both iLinks and Nokons are their ability to have tight bends in the cable without affecting shifting/braking qualities. Is that the case with these, or do they suffer the same attributes are traditional housing styles?


How tight of a bend do you need on a regular road bike. If you were building a TT bke where you need to do tight bends, then nokon or i-links it is. They say these are more flexible than the stock cables with steel wire. I'm sure anyone with a road bike will be fine with these. I know I don't have problems with my stock campy housings and they are cut as short as possible. perfect shifting and braking.
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