Noticed the shifting getting a bit stiff, assumed that this was just the cable ready for replacement. So new cable inner and outer installed and tried again. The shifter immediately jammed up and wouldn't shift up or down.

Had to take the shifter off the bars and split it to remove the cable. Checked everything and reassembled it and it appears to work fine.

Stuck it back on the bike and reconnected everything, changed up a couple of cogs and hey presto it jammed again!

So, have I got a knackered shifter (X9 only about 6 to 8 months old, but almost daily use) or is it possible that the cable inner has a duff end on it or something? I don't have another to try it with right now and LBS doesn't re-open until 5pm. So throwing it open to the STW collective to see if anyone has had a similar problem.

Cheers.

Are you sure it's not the mech?

sounds like its jamming against the stop screw on the front mech. ie too much on the high stop screw or too much cable tension.

or if its stiff, you could have routed the cable incorrectly altering the leverage ratio.

We're talking rear mech. It's a new(ish) mech and moves fine by hand. Plus the shifter didn't budge until I opened it up and released the cable manually. From then it shifted up and down (with no cable or tension from a cable or rear mech) quite normally.

Only when I put the cable back in and linked it back to the rear mech did it jam up again.

I once to a SRAM shifter apart. I had to then buy a new one.

Shimano shifters can be put back together easily, and I'm a good patient mechanic, but there's no way I could reassemble that SRAM.

Found the problem! 😀
Had to split the shifter again as I couldn't release or remove the cable again. This time I noticed that the cable had not passed through the correct hole in the plastic part which is activated by the shifter lever. It had basically managed to run itself around the outside of this and out of the correct hole to exit the shifter.

So when the lever was pressed, the cable was pulled a little by the innards of the shifter but then got itself wedged between the moving parts and the shifter body. I hadn't noticed this the first time I looked and had just quickly removed the cable, but I took my time on the 2nd adventure and noticed the bad routing.

Thank god the shifter was OK. I could do without the cost of a new one!

I've broken two X9 trigger shifters in the past under light use… Tried fixing but to no avail. Get some X0 gripshift instead.