Early 105 brifter not 'clicking'

ntbd.

Thought I’d just give an update of progress in the interests of forum educational development or FED.

So I couldn’t get my left brifter working after soaking it in a petroleum based product for a couple of days. It did start clicking, but was kinda random and didn’t feel smooth. So coolest guy on the planet Snowflake sorted me out with pair of replacement levers for a price I couldn’t refuse. However, my joy turned to deflation when I noticed the new left lever also wasn’t clicking.

However, Mr Flake shot me a link on bikeforums.net about partly dismantling the levers to give them a good clean. Seemed pretty easy and only needed a few allen keys and screwdrivers. So I pulled my original left lever apart without too much trouble. After a good clean out it did start to work, but still required multiple shfts to fully engage. I put it back together and set my sights on the second lever I got from Snowflake.

After having done the first one, the second was a piece of cake, and with a good clean out and re-lube it shifts and clicks like new! Here is a picture with Ezylee in mind:

I think Snowflake will agree, it’s actually quite addictive pulling these things to bits and making them work again. There’s a real satisfaction in hearing the pawls clicking into position. I’m even going to do the same with my right lever even though that’s working fine.

TL;DR Don’t throw away your old STI levers, they can easily be saved!

Here’s the how-to thread: GUIDE: Repairing Shimano 600 (6400) STI Levers relates to 105SC, RSX and 600 Ultegra STI levers. And probably some others that I’m not aware of.

Well there you go. Might have to pull apart those levers I nearly gave you, getting them to work again would be a nice little bonus.

Just to add to this, I found an old toothbrush and a small soft wire brush made cleaning the old grease out pretty easy, but I also had to use a small sharp prongy tool to scrape the last bits of crap form the pawls.

And a pro-tip I figured out this morning…it can be a bit tricky holding the lever assembly together with the pivot spring under tension while you put the pivot pin back in. So I made it a lot easier by putting the 4mm allen key through in place of the pivot pin and then tapping the pin against the allen key with a mallet so that the pin then replaces the allen key…thus keeping the whole assembly together.

And you can save some time by remembering to regrease everything before you put it all back together.

I don’t know this from my own experience but apparently the parts are all interchangeable between RSX, RX100, 105 & 600 8sp STIs.