Bicycle Tutor

Hi
I recently bought a new 2nd hand bicycle .
I took it on a ride on friday. And during one of the jumps the cable housing got stuck in the cassete, which resulted in it being damaged.
After looking into the issue I realized that the cable + housing that connects to the derailleur is very long (a big loop) and there isn't much options to make it any shorter due to the design of the lx derailleur (see the attached picture).
Anyone had a similiar issue happen to them? Is there anything I can do to solve this since I don't want it to happen again.

Thanks in advance!

Hi we78. Welcome to BT!
After more than 20 years as a bike mech, I can honestly say that this is a new one to me. I have seen some very strange things happen, though. Have a look at this page, about half-way down.
http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/cutting-cable-housing
This shows what the loop leading to the rear drlr should look like and why.
Unless your housing was routed incorrectly, I just can not imagine that landing a jump would cause it to go anywhere near the cassette. As you purchased the bike pre-owned, who knows what the previous owner did.
If you were riding trail, there is always the possibility of a 'ghost stick' flying up and getting caught in a bad place at a bad time. I blame a lot of things on sticks!

Oh wait - a thought just occurred to me. Is this a full suspension bike? If so, was the launch or landing of the jump severe enough to cause the rear suspension to bottom-out that you remember? Was the housing out of the frame-stops anywhere (at the rear) when you were looking it over? That could cause all kinds of havoc!

(Oct 28, 2012 06:24 AM)RobAR Wrote:  Hi we78. Welcome to BT!
After more than 20 years as a bike mech, I can honestly say that this is a new one to me. I have seen some very strange things happen, though. Have a look at this page, about half-way down.
http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/cutting-cable-housing
This shows what the loop leading to the rear drlr should look like and why.
Unless your housing was routed incorrectly, I just can not imagine that landing a jump would cause it to go anywhere near the cassette. As you purchased the bike pre-owned, who knows what the previous owner did.
If you were riding trail, there is always the possibility of a 'ghost stick' flying up and getting caught in a bad place at a bad time. I blame a lot of things on sticks!

Oh wait - a thought just occurred to me. Is this a full suspension bike? If so, was the launch or landing of the jump severe enough to cause the rear suspension to bottom-out that you remember? Was the housing out of the frame-stops anywhere (at the rear) when you were looking it over? That could cause all kinds of havoc!

Hi.
Thanks for the quick reply.
It's a full suspension bike (kona coilair 2009). The jump was actually quite small (less than half a meter off a ramp), I doubt anything like that could happen.
It is possible that some branches got stuck in there and made the cable housing go to the cassette as I remember removing some at some point from that area (didn't connect the dots until now). I will reinstall new cable housing in the manner that article describes and see if the problem will occur again.
Its good to hear that its a rare (or unheard of) issue, since I started wondering if perhaps there is a problem with the LX design, since on other derailleur I saw the cable is connected differently (there isn't such a big loop as on the LX, on SRAM if I recall correctly).

The "Shadow" type Shimano rear derailleurs have a different, shorter cable routing that may help:

This is the XT model, but there are XTR, Deoere, Saint and SLX versions as well:

This is a rather new one to me, glad to hear it'll work out, sticks have made me eat dirt before .