On 1/5/2011 6:58 AM, Jon Spangler wrote:
>
> John Betamus, thank you for making me not feel alone in the world of bicycle
> mechanics with regard to cables not stretching. I'm always shagrined (not
> crestfallen) when I hear someone who says their mechanic said this or that
> about cable stretch. I think of it this way: If you try to hang a car from a
> bridge with a bicycle cable, it will stretch...and then break. But the
> forces we put on these cables are not stretching them.
>
Sorry, but you are stressing and stretching the cables with braking forces, only not very much otherwise they wouldn't last at all. It is steel, so if you apply force to it it deforms, period
But in the total of armflex, squirm and compression of the blocks and cable it is not the most significant. Still stretching the rear brake cable by a millimeter shouldn't be beyond most of us, provided the other bits in the system are stiff enough to allow it.
-- mvg
Marten Gerritsen
Kiel Windeweer
Netherlands