this past sunday, josh, our current tzar of the racing union ministry of culture and entertainment, made an official state visit to the racing union bunker, deep below the plaza de la revolucion.  his principal purpose was to help restore the glory and utility of a beautiful pinarello he had picked up.  i'm not sure of it's age but the slx tubing andcomponent group give a rough guide.  it has a sweet four color fade and a very old dura ace groupo, including dura ace downtube shifters.  this bike is very much the new-old hotness.  regrettably, i had left my camera at a super deluxe and maximally fun bicycle birthday party that mikhail (our current tzar of making up crappy excuses for why he worked so hard for his teammates and then they couldn't come through and seal the deal) threw for his son nils the day before so i cannot pass along pictures.

but luckily josh got some shots and sent them along.  and here's the main point of the post.  i need help from the people.  josh and i sort of broke down a bunch of parts of the bike to make sure everything was working well.  it was all good except for the bottom bracket.  i don't really think this is a problem per se, but i am very curious about it.  the derailleur cables are routed through a small metal bracket welded to the bb shell.  they were obviously intended to be cable guides, but this seems like a very poor design.  the friction of the cable rubbing against the bb shell can't be good.  i know this was an intened feature.  for example, you can see, if you look carefully, that the bottom bracket has a small plastic sleeve around it.  you can see the two a's from the end of the word "dura" and the start of the word "ace".  if you've worked on old bikes or bought old parts, you'll recognize the sleeve: it's part of the old dura ace bottom bracket and keeps the water away from the bearing assemblies.  it predates the current cartridge system.

here's another look from a veyr similar model that josh pulled off ebay...

so here's the question: should these cable guides be refitted with small routing tubes, with the cable running through the tubes and the tubes running through the metal bracket, to prevent the derailleur cables from wearing themselves or the frame down from rubbing back and forth?  I'm thinking about the old gore "ride-on" cables that came with small sections of bright yellow, hard plastic sleeve to prevent the gore membrane from getting crushed.  does anyone have first hand experience with this?  any suggestions?  i assume people ran these configurations for years so maybe it's not an issue.  any and all help is appreciated.

- - - posted by scott