Help! Broken gear cable's frayed end stuck in shifter

[guyc]

My rear gear cable snapped, and now the frayed end is stuck in my Shimano 105 shifter. I can't pull it out with pliers, even when moving the shifter around. Anyone have any ideas about how to remove this?

[JustJames]

If I understand your description and pic correctly, the problem is that you are trying to pull, when you should be trying to push.

The other end of the cable will have a locating nipple, and you need to push that out.

[coffeeandwine]

Happened to me a few months ago.

Agree push rather than pull. Also, change gears until the hole (you thread the cable through) lines up with the gap you are working in. Use an elastic band to hold the brake on-frees up both hands.

cheers

[rustychisel]

Happened to me a few months ago.

Agree push rather than pull. Also, change gears until the hole (you thread the cable through) lines up with the gap you are working in. Use an elastic band to hold the brake on-frees up both hands.

cheers

+ 1 get the nipple hole lined up and out she slides....

[guyc]

In the end I'd fiddled with it and the gear levers so much that it was right inside the mechanism and impossible to pull out.

The solution turned out to be easy - I unscrewed the shifter's little plastic side plate and then I could remove what was left of the cable (the cable head/nipple and a few cm of frayed cable).

[Cycledelica]

Hi Everyone. First post in here and wanted to say I solved this problem today and it wasn't as bad as I expected based on some of the comments I had read here and elsewhere.

I have 105 shifters, and the rear derailleur cable snapped leaving about 8-9mm frayed cable attached to the nipple. If I attempted to open the little window in the lever to expose the frayed bit of cable, this would up-shift the ratchet mechanism and suck the cable (and nipple) further under the rotating drum and harder to get at. If I down-shifted, it brought the cable end up but it got stuck about half way, and then I couldn't get access to it with needle nose pliers because the up lever gets in the way.

So I bought a pair of fine point tweezers and bent my smallest allen key into a curve shape (ie: instead of a 90deg angle). I up-shifted (as little as possible, but enough to get an allen key down there) and then slide the allen key around under the rotating drum and poked around hoping to dislodge the nipple (pushing inwards and downwards). Then I downshifted in the hope it would bring the frayed cable up higher. I repeated this a couple of times and it worked. Then I was able to get access with the tweezers and just hang onto the cable while downshifting. That brought the nipple all the way back up and then it just popped out the little window as usual. Problem solved.

I definitely wouldn't recommend trying to take your shifters apart without trying this simple fix first!!