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I have an aluminium frame and the housing stop paint is chipped with aluminium oxide powder exposed, so I assume the ferrule has done some kind of galvanic corrosion reaction with the stop. I tried to pull it out with needle-nose pliers (the end is exposed), but it just bent. To avoid the risk of breaking off pieces or bending the ferrule (thereby making the whole system incapable of functioning at all), I gave up and just left it as is instead of replacing with a new (plastic) ferrule.

That said, what steps would one take to actually remove all of the ferrule material from the stop? Is there a nice way to do this (e.g. some substance to break down the corrosion) so that I don't risk jamming up the whole system?

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    A picture would help Commented Mar 31, 2025 at 7:26

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These can be brutally difficult situations if it's bad, i.e. if it's had a lot of exposure to sweat and is stuck hard.

One of the factors is that aluminum oxide corrosion in aluminum-on-aluminum interfaces is quite impervious to lots of things that work great elsewhere.

I use Finish Line Chill Zone often on difficult corrosion situations. Thermally shocking the parts works on an axis that other things don't, and doing it in the cold direction is generally safe. For maximum effect you need to use a lot of it, like 60 continuous seconds of blasting, and get it really cold and then let it sit a while. Before doing anything you need to rig up rags and plastic to keep the fluid from getting places you don't want.

On housing stops with slots, using a sufficiently narrow screwdriver or other bladed object as a punch from the bottom is a way of getting some force on it. Make sure it's actually narrow enough that it won't just wedge in once you get started. The risk is if it doesn't work but you mangle it in the process.

If the ferrule is still able to be a ferrule, there can be a lot to recommend just accepting the need to re-use it.

Ultimately there is the solution of going in at the bad angle required with needle files and just deleting everything that's not the frame. It's tedious but can be the only option.

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I’d start with plenty of WD40 or other penetrating oil. If the cable stop of the frame is wide enough and the hole in the ferrule small enough you might be able to push it out with a Phillips screw driver from the other end.

Otherwise I can’t think of anything better than the needle nose pliers you have tried. If the housing ferrule disintegrates you can usually start chiseling it out of the cable stop with a small flat head screw driver or similar.

One idea I haven’t tried: Insert a cylindrical object with the same diameter as a cable housing (maybe a 4mm hex key is good enough) so that you can grab and pull the ferrule with normal pliers without crushing it.

The biggest risk with all of this is that you could end up breaking off or destroying the frame’s cable end stop. But even then there are a few possible solutions: What's the strongest way to bond a cable stop to an aluminum frame?

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