Trying to install rear derailleur cable. Nearing meltdown. Please help.
 

For the sake of my sanity and yours, I'll be as brief as possible.

- Rear XTR derailleur installed/tightened on hanger.
- No chain on bike as of now (does the chain need to be on? Tried both ways but seemed like derailleur cable needed to be installed so that derailleur could be positioned properly for chain to be threaded through both derailleurs.)
- Rear shifter shifted to lowest gear/position.
- Ran cable through housing, then through rear derailleur.
- Pulled out slack, tightened.

When I did this and tried to shift through my gears, the rear derailleur would only shift through 6 of my 9 gears. Attempts to continue shifting result in the rear derailleur acting as if it has shifted as far as it will go. No amount of tightening/loosening of the cable has helped thus far.

Does anyone have a clue what I'm doing wrong?

Not without on site supervision.

before you put the cable on at all did it go out to the stroke limit screw setting on bothsides, hi and lo,
and so be centered, pulley under cog, and moving all the way between the 2 easily..

is the RD cage hitting the cassette ?

is the "H" stop screw set so the derailleur cage is visually aligned with the small cog on the cassette?

disconnect the cable from the RD, pull on it with some pliers,a nd click up/down through the gears with your shifter, does the cable move with each 'shift' ? do you count all 9 gears/clicks going up and down?

with the cable disconnected, how far can you manually move the RD up towards the largest cassette cog? adjust the "L" stop screw so the furthest position is about aligned with the large cassette cog.

now try again...

I am going to make the assumption that you installed a new rear derailleur. If that is the case, your problem is that new Shimano derailleurs have the low limit screw set so that you can't shift the derailleur all the way over. This is for safety to make sure that someone buying a new derailleur won't make the mistake of shifting the derailleur into the spokes. You have to adjust the low limit screw

Here's a good link to a rear dérailleur inst/adj guide that helped me in the past:

http://www.bike198.com/how-to-instal...ar-derailleur/

Btw Cliver, I call dérailleurs "derangers" (as in deranged) because that's how they can sometimes make us feel...