Evening all,

Caught the rear derailler on a rock mid ride today, and couldn’t change gear immediately after, shifter wouldn’t go up or down. Hopped off bike and apart from scratches didn’t look bent. Unnipped the allan bolt and full movement all ok. Shifter still unresponsive.

Its a clutch rear mech, i’m wondering if the rocks pushed it beyond its limit and pulled the cable up front damaging something inside the shifter?

Any ideas on a fix, or have I likely knackered something internally?

Its this exact shifter

That would be a strange thing to happen . If it works when not connected to the rear mech , which I think is what you are saying , then your rear mech is broken but your shifter is fine .

Hey Neil, shifter doesnt work connected or not now. Rear mech works fine now i’ve released the cable tension.

It’s possible it could be the shifter, but i’d suspect a cable issue first, possibly crushed/kinked and jamming near the mech, or the inner may have gone slack during the impact, jumped out of it’s housing in the shifter, and jammed it’s internals.

Id try to remove the cable outer so only the inner cable is attached to the shifter. It may be the rear mech impact has put a kink in the cable, such that the cable is under more tension than normal causing the shifter to lock up?
If need be I’d cut the cable so theres only 12″ or so left and try and remove it.

Thanks will try tonight. Any merit on opening up the shifters internals after checking above or are they un user servicable?

If they’re anything like Shimano guts, not really.

Removed all the screws and popped the cover off, cables bent in the wrong direction jamming the whole mech and spring up

Fitted a new cable into the housing

Just trying to get the spring to stay in place now while I get the cover on and keep the exit cable in situ, spring keeps popping out of the cut out it rests in grrrrrrrrrrr 😆

I warned you!
Well done for finding the problem. Sounds like the cable got pushed back up into the shifter and then went where it shouldn’t and got jammed. Out of interest do you have continuous outers?

Got the technique for spring fitment and quickly chucking top back on nailed 😆 I’ve got full length housing, reckon thats not helped? As with staggered housing they’d have been a release point for forced through excess cable to bulge out? Instead its bulged out inside the shifter and jammed.

Next problem it seems the black plastic circular cable end rotation bit is in the wrong place, it needs to be linear to the cable exit. Its skipped over some of the cogs and now at a right angle to the cable exit, so can only click 2 gears worth at the moment.

Its currently in even more bits now, not far off complete disassembly 😕

I think you’ve got it right, there was nowhere else for the cable to go, but into the shifter.
Good luck with getting it all back together. I amazed myself a few years ago by managing to repair a broken XT M73x STI shifter by cannibalising an already broken one.

I had the same thing on an X9 10 spd shifter with the cable, it was new too.

I also smashed my x1 11 spd shifter cleanly off the other week, the casing broke, not the bracket. It does still work so I’ve got half a shifter which I’ll be keeping as a spare, though in my experience they are never quite right if you completely strip them down (though that is likely my poor bodge skills).