Park Tools Internal Cable Routing tool review
March 20th, 2015
By Andrew Dodd in Reviews
Product Full Name: Park Tools IR-1 Internal Cable Routing installation tool
Retail Price: £49.99
Available From: www.madison.co.uk
If you have a frame with internal cable routing, then this tool will almost certainly make your life a lot easier.
Most high end mountain bike frames allow some degree of internal cable routing, but whilst frames like the Santa Cruz Nomad make things easy for the home mechanic by using a dedicated internal channel for the cable to slide down, most frames don’t have a feature like this.
Installing a cable in most frames takes a lot of patience, and tends to result in a lot of frustrating whittling and probably a load of colourful language when the inevitable happens…
Included in the Park Tools IR-1 kit are three cables. Two of which feature a powerful positive magnet tip on one end and a connector on the other – one has a threaded barbed tip for screwing in to outer cable housing, and the other a rubber sleeve that accepts housing. The other cable has a negative magnet on one end, and a straight tip on the other which can be used to extend the other cables, or solve issues with the magnetic tips pushing through rubber grommets. Also included is a very powerful positive guide magnet.
This is a simple system that allows you to feed the relevant guide cable in to your frame, and pull it through using the magnet on the outside of the frame tube. You simply then connect the guide cable to the outer cable you want to pull through the frame and pull the outer back through.
Some frames can be tricky if they have rubber grommets on the exit of the guide hole, but you can get round this by inserting the negative cable through one end, and a positive in the other – the magnets are strong enough that they find each other in side the frame, and you are able to pull the cable through the grommet.
We tried this with a few frame options, and whilst some were a little fiddly we never suffered bouts of rage or foul language.
We say
The Park Tools IR-1 Internal Cable Routing installation kit is simply brilliant – the most brilliant ideas are always simple after all. If you have a bike with internal cable routing that isn’t a Santa Cruz Nomad – we’d recommend considering getting one of these installation kits. The IR-1 is a pleasure to use and will get you on the trail faster. Check out the videos below to get an idea of how the tool works in the flesh…