Yokozuna Reaction Cable System

August 15, 2011
Yokozuna Reaction Cable System

Yokozuna cables look interesting...

The SRAM Red group comes with some Gore Ride-on Cables — and while they’re buttery smooth when new, the elements quickly turns these cables into doo-doo. Gore must have gotten the idea from guitar strings to coat them in a fragile low friction material. Problem is, the lining wears and shears off very quickly making a mess in your cable housing. So I decided to make a change when CompetitiveCyclist had a good deal on Yokozuna Reactions a little while ago. I had heard great things about them from Bike Forums and immediately bought a set. That’s where all the headaches began :(

Side note: CompetitiveCyclist, seriously, over a week to ship a set of cables to me? Sorry, I’m just an impatient guy I guess — spoiled with closer warehouses for other online vendors.

Let me put this simply, Yokozuna Reaction cables/housings are a serious pain in the ass to install. I even bolded it for you — this should deter most of you who don’t work on your own bicycles. You will need a dremel and cutoff wheel to cut the housings as not to restrict cable movement within the housings.

Tight radius turns don't work with the Yokozuna Reaction Cables.

Tight radius turns don't work with the Yokozuna Reaction Cables.

Other issues might include cable routing due to the thickness of the cable housings. They’re really thick and very firm — it’s supposed to translate to better braking feel — more on that later. Additionally, if you have any sort of tight bends, such as the rear cable stop to the rear brake, forget about it — the cable housing is so firm that even with a generous bend the tension in the housing itself will force your brake off center. After cutting different size cable housings with different angled bends and trimming them to the nearest millimeter or so, I still couldn’t get this right and decided to replace that leftover bit with regular brake cable housing.

From a performance point of view, compression-less cable housings are supposed to be the bee’s knees in cable feel. I don’t notice the difference, and if you do — it’s probably all in your head.

Yokozuna Reaction: Meh.

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