The front shifter/derailure on my road bike (Dawes Galaxy with Sora shifters) doesn’t want to change gear so I’m stuck in the middle chainring.
The lever appears to be working ok but this isn’t translating into any movement of the derailure.
It hadn’t been crashed or received any impact and I have lubricated the front mechanical.
Could it be that a new cable would sort this out or is it likely that a really good squirt of lube down the outers would get thing moving again?
The cables have no outers between the top of the downtube and the meccs.

Might be cables, might be seized mech, can you move it by hand?

Mech seems to move by hand.

Not done any fettling of road shifters before so a bit cautious about fiddling and making it worse 😳

A suggestion:

Try pulling the exposed bare cable (where it runs parallel to the down tube) away from the down tube. If it moves away freely, then again you should see the front mech move. If it is stiff/resists movement, that might point to the cable not running smoothly in the bottom bracket cable guide.

You could also pull the cable away from the down tube and then operate the STI shifter (small ring to big ring) to feel if the shifter movement is pulling the cable.

Thanks Slowster.
Cable moves the mech ok any the shifter moves the cable.
It appears that the mech simply isn’t moving enough to actually make the chain change cogs so I’m stuck on the middle ring.
The front mech doesn’t reach the stop screw in either direction so it isn’t that.

Seized mech. Free it off, ideally disassemble.

Which ring wont it shift into? The big one, little one or both? It sounds like it just needs a good clean and degrease to me to get it moving again has it not been used for a whike/ridden through winter and left to seize? Maybe a bit of wd40 and an old toothbrush to work it in and get it moving with your fingers. Other than that it could be the return spring has gone or the cables arent allowing it enough slack to move to the small ring but without knowing a bit more and seeing a pic its difficult to know what to suggest

Replace cable and all outer/housing with quality stuff. Had the same issue with my rear very recently.

Could be broken outer cable housing somewhere? Check where the ferrules are, if it’s cracked and can compress the it basically dampf the effect of the inner pulling.

If operation of the STI shifter IS causing the front mech to move, just not enough to shift the chain either onto the outer ring or the inner ring, does that mean that when you to try to shift to the inner ring, the amount of cable released by the shifter is more than the amount of movement by the mech, and consequently there is excess/slack cable, i.e. you can feel with your hand that the cable is under no tension and is loose? That would indicate the problem is with the mech (or with the movement of cable through the bottom bracket cable guide, e.g. if it were gunged up).

You say the front mech will not move all to way to the stop/limit screws in either direction – is that based purely on using the STI shifter, or have you confirmed this, e.g. by pulling the cable as much as you can by hand to mimic a shift onto the outer ring?

If you had a double chainset, and it refused to shift onto the big ring, that might suggest the cable was not properly clamped to the front mech and was slipping between the clamping surfaces, but for a triple to be stuck on the middle ring and move, but just not move sufficiently either way to change gear, suggests that the problem is with the front mech. I would have a very close look at the mech to see if there were any foreign objects/grit lodged in the mechanism.

NB I presume no one has undertaken any work lately on the bike, since the obvious cause then would be if someone had incorrectly re-clamped the cable (incorrectly routing the cable in a front or rear mech where it is clamped, can sometimes alter the amount the mech moves for a given amount of cable pulled).

And do take a good look at the cable where it runs through the bottom bracket cable guide. For example, if the cable were frayed at that point, I could imagine that the rogue strands of cable might interfere with and limit the amount of cable movement in either direction.

some good advice above – not quite sure if are saying that if you pull cable by hand the mech will move to limit screws or not?

if it doesn’t then try cleaning the mech and some wd40 on the moving parts (I know some people hate this as attracts dirt but salt from the roads kills front mechs)

if mech will move by hand then I’d suspect the cable – I’ve had a cable start to fray inside the STI and had similar – changing a cable is easy peasy plenty of vids on youtube

I’d probably change the outer at the same time just to be sure – need decent cable cutters though