Road Bike shifters

[Sky King]

if you aren't ready to toss them just yet, try soaking them in some solvent. The Bike Hermit just had to do that on a customer's pair as the gunk and grease was causing them to not work at all. Now they are fine.

[OakLeaf]

What I did with my R700s was flush them with solvent (WD-40), which I could do without taking them off the bike - just roll back the hoods, put a catch bottle, drip tray and towels underneath, set your sprayer to "stream," and pump WD into the mechanism and let it stream out.

But, the symptom I was having - which people here told me the solvent flush was a potential fix - was that the ratchet wouldn't catch, not that it was hard to push. I would push and the lever would move but nothing would happen with the cable. So not the same symptom as yours. Still, couldn't hurt to try.