Cables and Housing

Big helpful hint that all the videos seem to gloss over completely - 

Even with the Park Tool cable cutter, the housings you cut will be prone to collapsing flat at least partially. It's amazingly annoying to open these up without a good tool - you'd think it would be easy to push the edges back but they really resist you. And leaving the sloppier half-folded edge will leave a ridge that will definitely cause friction on the cable - I suspect sloppy cable housing cutting will cause tons more friction than even a cheap but properly installed cable with good housing cuts.

You'll need a sharp 'pick' or other sharp pointy tapering tool to push the housing open for best effect. I was using small nails when I started, but you can't get good leverage to really push it open. (I currently use a pair of sharp tweezers that just happens to fit into the hole perfectly and pushes it open when I push the tips in.)

As for chains, I think most of them are all good but if you're at the point you are changing your own cables/housing, you're probably into a well working bike enough that you should seriously consider switching to a WAXED chain (no lube). Not that it's going to save you many watts at all, but a waxed chain stays super clean, and won't leave any black bike tattoo at all even when you grab it solid with your hand. Makes wrenching your bike soooooo much better, and the waxing is super easy. (There is a great youtube video showing how to use a $10-$15 slow cooker to melt the paraffin wax, then you just dunk the chain, cool, and mount on bike.) 

Seriously, the waxed chain made the single biggest difference for me in the enjoyment vs hatred of wrenching my bike. No more ruined clothes, no more gobs of blackened rags, no more black fingernails after serious hand degreasing. 

Go waxed. Seriously, if you even remotely consider working on your bike, you will be SOOOOO thankful you made the move. 

It's a minimal effort and minimal investment. I actually think it's MUCH faster than lubing a chain if you lube a chain correctly, which means that you take the time to properly clean and degrease your chain first (and we all know how well that works in terms of preventing chain tattoos, like no effect) and then lube each chain link point by point. That's actually really time-consuming!

There are a few excellent youtube videos on waxing bike chains with a slow cooker - go check 'em out. 

It's as easy as:

- Put wax in small slow cooker, melt on 'hi' (takes 15-30 mins depending on how much paraffin wax you put in)

- Once wax is melted, dunk chain in it. (You do need a chain with a masterlink to easily open/close the chain. It's a great chain investment, anyway.)

- Wait 5-15 mins and then pull chain out. Wipe excess off with paper towel. Cool.

- Mount on bike.

And the best part - if your chain was ALREADY waxed before, you don't even need to clean your chain before dunking it in the melted wax again - it should be clean enough that any dirt/grime will just settle out into the melted paraffin when you rewax it and you can recycle the paraffin over and over again (the gunk settles to the bottom, some folks carve off the gunk after it cools.) Furthermore, with this method, the wax is definitely where it needs to be, which is IN the chain friction points, and not just sitting on top of the chain as is often the case with a typical bottle lube/wax method. 

Buy everything on Amazon - it's like $15-18 for a slow cooker, and $10-$15 for enough paraffin to last years if you reuse it.  

It's no joke - the moment I switched to wax, wrenching the bike went from a stinking black mess that turned me off to wrenching completely (ruined countless gloves, rags, paper towels, disposable latex gloves, etc) to a very enjoyable, CLEAN, zen-like activity that you absolutely do NOT have to wear gloves for. It's really that amazing a difference.

No special chain needed. It is, however, recommended to start with a NEW chain if possible, just because it looks prettier from the get-go and stops the dirt from even beginning to get inside the chain. (Although starting with a dirty chain works fine too, but you'll have blackened wax for awhile from the old dirt.)