Brucey wrote:if you are sceptical, this may be because you have never had to remove a broken cable end from deep within a shifter, or seen a shifter break because of such a broken cable. To those who have seen either or both, 'lifeing' a cheap consumable like a cable inner makes perfect sense.
Remember that cables in shifters always violate design rules for near-infinite fatigue life, so it isn't a question of 'if' the inner cable will fail, merely a question of when.
FWIW cable inners break in DT and bar end shifters too; this happens less often, because few riders so equipped shift as frequently as with STIs. When the inner cable starts to fail in a DT lever or BE shifter, this commonly announces itself by the broken cable strands repeatedly stabbing you in the fingers.... nice....
cheers
I've done a few on shifters bought second hand, yes it can be a pain but that's because many people either don't set up the cables correctly or use cheap cables and/or simply never bother to check their cables. A few minutes of undoing the cable end at the RD and checking once a year is more than suffice for 99.999% of users.
In your example of someone changing out every 9 months, people having to change so frequently are either do something wrong or use inferior products whilst doing no maintenance or even changing under duress. Repeating the same mistakes, ignoring maintenance will keep on having the same problem, looking at what you might be doing wrong is going to save a decent amount of time and cost over the long run.
And let's be honest 150,000 shifts over 9 months could equate to 7500 miles or 150 x 50 mile rides, 800-1000 gear shifts on a 50 mile ride that's even a bit up and down are easily done, considering the number of shifts just in the course of approaching and departing a junction, a seemingly high number of shifts are really nothing out of the ordinary, changing a gear cable so often however is even with the hidden cable gear systems seems out of kilter.