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Or I thought... I suppose I'm still reasonably new to building road bikes.
Anyway, I've just reconverted my partner's bike to drops and have fitted some Shimano STI's
They're the new Sora 9-speed, the ones with clean under-the-bar-tape cable routing
So the shifting feels horrible, particularly the front. It wasn't like this with the flat-bar shifters I just removed, so not sure what's up, but have three suspects:
First, I haven't fitted cable ferrules where the cables enter the shifters, because the Jagwire ferrules I have are too fat and the cable port in the shifter is very deep, so figured it may be fine without them. I could be wrong...
Second, perhaps my cable cutters are worn and in my rather glum state today I may have not cut the ends clean enough. If this is the case I'm clearly just being a bit of a fool today
Third, perhaps the shifters I got from ebay are a bit knackered -- the left does feel slightly more stiff than I'd expect without the cable in, but not particularly so so I doubt this is the full story.
Does the first suspect sound a feasible one, or anything else obvious I should check for?
Thanks
My first thought would be to check for burrs on the end of the cable outers then look at the routeing around the top bend in the handlebars. You want to have as large a radius as possible so if the lever allows it then have the outer cable run around the outside of the bend.
You may be able to work out if its the cable or the lever by trying the shifting out with the lever removed from the bar as well.
The latest Shimano inner cables have "S" and "D" embossed on them although I haven't noticed a difference with non-Shimano inners. Cable Magic lube
I prep the cable outer ends with a file and the pointy-thing on my cable cutters, but I don't cut cable outer with those cutters (bolt coppers for the rough cut). You need ferrules
Clean cut of gear cables essential - I use a bench grinder to get them square and most importantly a sharp-pointy thing to open up the liners, otherwise they'll drag on the shift. Check the manual to see if ferrules are needed at the lever end. If the gear outers are bent too tight, they can really drag on the shift - I tape them in place with electrical tape to make sure they're working before fitting bar tape.
Ah, well, my mind really is all over the place today
Turns out I have got Ferrules on the gear cables where they enter the shifters. It's the brake cable Ferrules that I left off as they wouldn't fit into the port in the levers. Looking at the manual this is how it should be.
Having a feel of the shifters again, I'd say the rear shifter is perhaps stiff from some general laziness on my part and not cutting the cables clean or lubing them up properly.
But the front isn't stiff in the same way, it's more that it takes a hard push to get the shifter moving at all. There's then a significant cracking sound and it shifts up to the large ring OK. Downshifts feel fine, so the cable itself can't be too bad.
Really feels like there is a mechanical jamming in the shifter, which is pretty annoying
Check the shifter for strands of old cable. When the inners fail and fray they can leave bits inside the mechanism. Just had to extract some cable fragments from my levers last week after the inner split at the nipple.