XT 12 speed shifter failure

Went to shift into a lower gear at the start of my ride yesterday and the lower lever suddenly swung back with no resistance on it. Trigger still works to go into a harder gear and no way to shift back to an easier gear. So it seems the cable is still in ok but something has gone awry inside.

On a quick Google I got some hits referring to this failure being common ish in XT 12 speed shifters but hadn’t read this before.

Has anyone had this and found a way to fix it? I’m assuming it’s terminal but have a very cheap slx replacement on order from Merlin (so it won’t have the double shift up of the xt but is apparently a lighter shift as a result) so happy to dismantle it and have a play around to see if it’s fixable.

I had this and when I opened it up the cable nipple had mangled a bit of the insides so it went in the bin

Older style shifter, but I’d imagine it’ll give you somewhere to start

How to fix a shimano shifter that won’t shift – YouTube

Had an XTR one do the same, the spring that holds the ratcheting part had failed, had it warrantied by CRC

Ah mine is from 2020 so imagine it’s out of warranty – think it’s 2 years on anything other then dura ace or Xtr when it’s 3

I had something similar, fortunately under warranty.

My XT one failed too.

I haven’t read the thread but some info here

https://www.mtbr.com/threads/shimano-xtr-m9100-shifters-keep-breaking-no-downshift-intermittently.1150763/

Ha, I had two Shimano shifters fail in this way!
In 1999…
In those cases the end snapped off the ratchet in the shifter. Worth a look I guess

Sounds like it’s terminally dead in that case – the ok just chuck it out when the new one comes. I’ve got another bike with sram GX eagle on it so will use that if I want to mtb this weekend!

I can’t bring myself to do another ride with my Transition Sentinel as a singlespeed just in 6th gear. 155mm of coil spring rear suspension isn’t conducive to efficient standing up pedalling 🤣

Had the same with a xtr and it’s replacement xt shifter both warrantied by shimano. Lost faith in shimano and now using a sram gx shifter with xt mech.

I did toy with a GX shifter instead actually – but then I found the bargain slx so thought I’d try that. If that fails then sram will be tried instead.

I’d go full sram GX but Shimano 12 speed cassettes have better ratios towards the low end.

Interesting, fwiw I’ve only ever broken SRAM shifters in the past, never broke an XT or XTR, even if I did I’d still stick with Shimano.