tl;dr;? Just see bullet points below...
My mom recently gave my wife her old Raleigh Horizon bike. She must have gotten it around the year 1990, and there's no way she spent much on it (she's kinda cheap).
I don't know much about bike's - I mean I rode them every day of my life as a kid, but I never really got into the nitty gritty details of a repair or upgrade. My plan with this Raleigh, is to repaint it, which shouldn't be a problem. However, I also wanted to replace the cables and shifters if possible since it's disassembled already. Possibly the cassettes, too.
Finding information on an old cheapo bike like this is kinda hard. Most Youtube videos are for hardcore guys who are all about their $1000+ bikes (probably you guys lol).
I basically want to get my wife a bike that works well but isn't going to cost me more than $100 (USD). I have the bike, it technically works, but the chain does slip off when shifting a lot and these shifters need to pressed pretty hard to make them do anything. They're also slightly rusted.
I've already disassembled the entire thing to prepare it to be painted. I just want to reassemble it with some new parts to make it better...
My questions are:
- Are brake cables and shift cables the same? On Amazon I see most are sold as "shift" or "brake" cables but they seem the same to me...
- What type of cables would an older bike like this need if I wanted to replace them (and maybe upgrade, if not too expensive)?
- Can you recommend a set of sprockets (or cassettes) that would allow the shifting to work better. Nothing extreme, just simple but decent ones... if that's a thing :)
- Can you recommend a set of shifters?
- Is there any other inexpensive upgrade that you might recommend?
Thank you! Sorry for the noob questions
UPDATE: updated the terminology to be correct (I think). Thanks @ojs :)