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I'm having shifting issues with my road bike at the moment and I reckon it's down to a dodgy cable.
What's good in the way of gear cables for road bikes?
The bike is running 1x11 Sram Force with full length outers if that makes any difference.
My go to cables for both mtb and my gravel bike are Jagwire, great shifting with no maintenance what’s not to like
SP41 or jagwire for me.
eTap 👌
Shimano Dura Ace polymer coated. Standard Shimano is fine. But watch for ingress of dirt in the last section of cable, that is by far and away the commonest issue for shifting woes. Also first generation 10 speed with hidden cables has a dreadful cable routing and is sensitive to shifting. If you have this (ultegra 6700 or 105 5700), upgrading to the Dura Ace cables, which are not cheap, will be a worthwhile improvement.
Earlier 10 speed, and 11 speed are much better. Dura Ace 7800 still shifts the best though!
I mostly use sram pit stop stainless 1.1mm ones with Shimano sp41 outer with the sealed end caps
Jagwire Road Racer set for me. Or any new, well set up cables will probably make a difference
Check the chain as well
If the shifting problem is shifting from small-to-big then it's down to bike set-up / alignment e.g. chain length, cable tension, gear hanger whereas if the the problem is big-to-small, then its most likely down to cables e.g. dirty / excessively tight bends, crimped outer
If it's 1x11 Force then I presume it's some sort of Gravel/CX/Adventure bike and subject to the usual water/grit/salt that comes with that. I'd stick with SP41 outer and cheap-ish Teflon/PTFE/polymer coated inners. The new shimano polymer ones are great, but too expensive to replace frequently if its not actually worn cables causing poor shifting.
Cut the new outer 6-8" from the end (just before it goes into the chain stay) and fit a cable oiler which let's you flush out the crap after a ride and prolong their life. Then just replace the inner and last few inches every so often.
I would just go for something simple like clarks. They're cheap and work a lot better than the ones that came with my dura ace groupset. I'd avoid expensive ones like that which claim to have some coating with magical powers. In the case of dura ace the coating just clogged up the cable outers and made shifting a lot harder .