Originally Posted by
GuitarBob
For me, it's idle curiosity. When I snap a shifter cable because I'm too irresponsible to replace it regularly, I can at least look back and see that, yeah, I should have changed it a couple thousand miles ago...
????
But then you would have wasted being able to use it for a couple of thousand miles.
You could just...I don't know...look at it from time to time and see if there's any fraying. The first time I broke a cable my shifting had gotten progressively worse. The second time my shifting got worse I checked the cable, and voila!