Bicycle Mechanics - rapid fire shifters wont shift

My rapid fire shifters will only click into a few of the gears. After those few gears, the shift lever does not seem to grip the shifting gear, and moves around freely. I have tried spraying it out with wd-40 with no luck. I have had this problem before and resolved it with wd-40, but it will usually grip the gear if I push up on the lever. These shifters wont grip at all. Any ideas?
thanks in advance

My rapid fire shifters will only click into a few of the gears. After those few gears, the shift lever does not seem to grip the shifting gear, and moves around freely. I have tried spraying it out with wd-40 with no luck. I have had this problem before and resolved it with wd-40, but it will usually grip the gear if I push up on the lever. These shifters wont grip at all. Any ideas?
thanks in advance

Yeah. Take the hoods completely off, and tinspect the pawls/gears closely. I can almost guarantee the pawls and their return springs are gunked up with crud or dried grease. Get the WD-40 stream onto them directly and hose them down liberally while working the mechanism. Let them sit for a bit and hoe them down again. They'll start working again.

I've gotten my hands on a lot of bikes with rapid fire shifters that were inoperable. I've restored every single one to complete functionality by following this procedure.

I agree with bigbossman, a good cleaning is your best bet. Whatever you do, don't dissassemble the small parts inside the shifter pod. I did this once, and I'm proud to say I did get the thing back together, but it was a tedious PITA. And in the end, all I had accomplished was taking it apart and putting it back together. At the time, I think I mistakenly thought I needed to replace a part or something-

Check to be sure that it's not that your cable slipped in the clamp on the derailuer. If so you will only get a few gears depending how far it slipped.

I agree with bigbossman, a good cleaning is your best bet. Whatever you do, don't dissassemble the small parts inside the shifter pod....

+1

All you need to do is to be able to observe the pawl, pawl spring, and serrated teeth that they interact with. The pawl is spring loaded, and naturally rests in the serrated teeth to keep the gear under tension. What usually happens is that the spring gets gunked up, and cannot exert enough force to return the pawl into the notches.

Just take off the cover, locate the little pawl, work the mechanism and observe. You will be able to determine in short order if this is the case with your shifter. If the pawl is not resting securely in one of the notches, you need to clean it.