Project XC Racer - Cable Routing

Building the Whyte 20-CS went pretty easily, but the one thing I tangled myself up a bit with was the gear cable routing.  The first thing to stump me was the cable brackets themselves.  As fitted to the frame when I received it (admittedly second hand) they have a wider diameter on the RHS (Right Hand Side) of the bike (LHS as viewed from the front of the bike).  The second was which side the cables should run, the convention would be the rear deraillieur cable down the left to allow a nice smooth curve to the cable from the right hand shifter, and vice versa for the front dérailleur - but at first look this wouldn't work.  As I bought the frame used, I decided to crack on and try to figure these things out for myself.

My first thought was that the wider diameter clamp was for the rear brake as the hydraulic line has a wider diameter, however I quickly ruled this out as the rear brake has it's own dedicated run underneath the down tube, and with the rear calliper mount between the chainstay it couldn't run any other way.  My final thought on the bracket was that it had been designed this way to allow a 1 x 10 set up with the vacated clamp for the front dérailleur used to run the hydraulic line for a dropper post. 

For the gear cable routing, the conventional routing made the curve around the seat tube for the front dérailleur very tight.  I had researched lots of images, as well as the Whyte 2012 catalogue to see what other bikes were built with.  Though there aren't too many Whyte 20-C's out there, I found several examples but even across the range in the catalogue from Whyte, there wasn't a consistent majority for any one set up.

What I found to suit the frame best was running the front deraillieur cable down the RHS of the bike and the rear deraillier down the LHS with a crossover between the second and third clamps and both cables running round the RHS of the seatpost.  This can be seen in the image from the Whyte 2012 20-C page on the Whyte website.

http://whyte.bike/2012/bike_page.php?ModNo=W-1-008-12

Whyte 20-CS Cable Routing

Whyte 20-C Cable Routing

Conventional Routing but with both cables on the RHS of the seat tube

Whyte 20-CS Cable Routing

Whyte 20-C Routing and Preferred Option

For now I am going to go with the routing from the 20-C on the Whyte website, but will see if I can contact Whyte or one of their distributors to see if they can help.