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As much as I like SRAM stuff, not being able to buy small fragile plastic parts that could prevent the binning of a £250 brifter is a bit much.
I had a broken 1x 11 hydro Force shifter- the internal cable spool had failed at what is apparently a common point- the little ‘bridge’ of plastic on the spool, that forms the upper part of the cable-end ‘keeper’. It was on a high-end CX bike that I bought 2nd hand- it was fine at purchase, and began to fail some months later. SRAM didn’t want to know. I ended up buying an Apex unit to replace it, at about £160 (GBP).
But its bugged me for ages, and I’ve ‘bodged’ a fix. Actually, if I may say so- its stronger than new.
In a nutshell-
-strip out the spool
-glue in a plastic rawlplug into the curved ‘bed’ where the cable-end would sit
-let the glue set hard (I used cyano)
-trim the end of the rawlplug off vertically
-drill a hole just big enough for a 1.2mm shifter cable to get through
-using a Dremel, make a 90 degree ‘step’ or land, approximately 5mm vertically and horizontally
-finally, file or grind the end from a Shimano/SRAM shifter cable down- you want it down to about 3.5mm or so
The trick in it all is to size a)the step and b)the cable-end removal so that the inserted cable-end doesn’t impede rotation in the shifter housing.
Note that this means that future cable changes need a cable-end ground down. I’d fitted a full-length outer on this CX bike, so hopefully I won’t have to change inners too often.
Anyway- its another way to prevent SRAM shifters going to landfill/scrap
So anyway- here’s an Google Drive page with some shots and a video I took while doing it, as none of my images will load directly here-
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18iOEFHwHroflGVQ0g2sAmquZ4JxHQatK?usp=sharing