Originally Posted by
frogman
So here you are 15 miles away from home, on a trail nowhere near any roadways on your gravel bike and your brifters crap out. How do you make field adjustments to lock them up to stay at least in a low gear so you can pedal back home ? That is my fear with the Shimano 10 speed
brake shifters. I had Shimano bar end shifters mounted up on the handlebar with Paul Thunbie mounts earlier and with them I could switch to friction shifting if the indexing crapped out, which was nice, but now I am spoiled with the Shimano brifters.
You'd deal with it the same as if you have so many flats you run out of spare tubes and patches. And the failure of a shift lever is much, much less likely with simple attention to cables. So if you never worry about having multiple flats exceeding your ability to repair the holes, you should worry even less (less than never) about a shfiter or cable failure. But as others have said, don't ignore the cables for years on end.