Shimano brifter not shifting up

Last night my bike wouldn't shift to the larger cogs on the rear derailleur. I pulled the shifter apart this morning and the pawl (circled green) won't engage the ratchet. It looks like the spring (circled yellow) has broken. Is it fixable, or do I need a new brifter?

Current brifter is Shimano RS 505, and I've had the bike since new for almost exactly 4 years. I know it's well out of warranty, but am a bit gutted if it's broken in a way I can't repair!

2 Attachments

No idea if this would help for your situation, but I had a (older) Ultegra brifter that jammed while shifting to bigger cogs. The shifter felt mechanicaly blocked, so you couldn't 'flap' it to the left. I solved it by removing the shifter from the bar and tightening the allen key bolt on the back (where shifter meets bar) to remove a slight amount of play. Had the same problem on a R8000 Ultegra shifter, but that one lacked the allen key bolt on the back so no chance to adjust. Sent in for waranty at LBS...

Thanks, I will take a look just in case. The shifter moves freely and will move the derailleur. However, the ratchet doesn't catch and so the derailleur just moves right back down the cassette.

ok, totaly different problem than ....

usually this is a result of the grease gumming up and getting sticky, holding the pawl out. but if you have it apart you can see if thats the case or not.

just looking at it, it looks like the spring is relatively easy to get at, appears to be a couple of circlips to remove and you can reach it. if you can get another spring, that would probably be the hard part... you might be able to get one from a random scrap shifter though? the springs may well be all the same with a bit of luck

It'll be worth asking in the wanted ads here and on the modern section on Retrobike. I had a similar issue with a SRAM shifter and it was a matter of figuring out if any other shifters in the range shared the part. Then I just put out a wanted ad to see if anyone had any of those broken shifters in their stash.

Yeah, good shout. I've just posted a wanted advert here and on my cycling club's facebook.

I wondered about the springs being shared with other shifters. I just watched videos of disassembly of 105 and ultegra shifters on YouTube, though, and the mechanism and springs look totally different. I'll keep looking, though. Surely they didn't design a bespoke ratchet system for this 1 specific shifter model?