Shifter cable broke down: misuse, lack of maintenance, shifter or regular occurrence? My rear shifter cable just snapped yesterday. It broke down without any real warnings that I can recall. It neatly broke right at the head, that remained inside the shifter (a Shimano one).

If I recall correctly, it already broke last year but as I don't do much distance I wonder if this is normal. I had the cable changed at a local shop, and I must say I don't know which cable they put in, but it seemed quite cheap.

I isolated a few possible causes:


I shift too often/too many gears at once. As I ride the bike in a city I tend to quickly shift down when approaching a red light, and back up when it turns green. Should I instead remain in an upper gear and use more strength to get going ? Or maybe just shift the front gear once ?
I don't really put any maintenance effort in the shifter, should I maybe grease it from time to time? Especially since the bike is parked under a shed, but not in a closed garage.
Maybe the shifter itself is damaged, I bought this bike from second hand, it has visibly suffered a few falls, but the external damage is minimal.


Or is this a perfectly normal occurrence ?
It's not uncommon. Some Shimano shifters are prone to breaking off near the head in the shifter and it can be a bugger to get that little bit out of the shifter. My wife has Ultegra 9sp and I have to replace her cable about every 12-18 months.

She can now tell when it's beginning to fray because the shifting gets dodgy before it completely breaks.