Originally Posted by
Kontact
Sora was a road group for most of its existence. A newbie posts looking for help and gets 15 posts about how he asked the question wrong. You guys are NOT helpful.
Shimano road levers have a floating cable stop in them so you can get the cable in despite the shifting mechanism that would otherwise be in the way. Once the cable is in you need to confirm that this barbell shaped piece is horizontal and seated correctly.
Otherwise, is the housing seated correctly on the other side of the lever?
Did you not read the original post, there was no mention of road anything just a Sora brake lever. If I were thinking of a brake lever of that era it would be a brake lever not an STI lever or "brifter" as some people call it. Plus the OP mentions a barrel adjuster which is not present on that era of Sora STI levers but is present on the brake levers for flat bars which is why the comments were given. We are not all magical mind readers and cannot see things that aren't there and so we go with the information given.
However the rest of your advice is fine and it would have made sense to just lead with that.