Shimano 6800 right brifter repair

A few weeks back, I was in the embarrassing situation of having several of my bicycles out of commission at the same time. Voyage Voyage (Ti Travel bike) had been disassembled for installation of SRAM Etap drivetrain; the Sky Blue Parlee's right shift cable had broken; by 2012 Canyon CF had gone onto the trainer for Powercranks ...

I first tried to fix the shifter cable, as that was the fastest to get back in service.  But when I tried to install the new cable, it seemed that there was still some cable and the cable head stuck inside, and the shifter would go more than one click toward the big cassette. I quickly removed the new cable (fortunately it was still removable and unblemished).

In the end, I removed the shifter from the bike, and ended up taking off all the visible screws and covers until I could find the problem. There was an inch-long piece of frayed cable still in place. Once that was removed, it was easy to put the parts back on. And now I know that I could have left alone the front portion of the component (I removed 5 screws in total) and done this with only a single screw removal -- the one that secures two plates on the bottom of the brifter near where it attaches to the handlebars. Unfortunately, I could not find a good youtube video for repair of THIS model of Shimano brifter.

The Shimano Dura Ace 9000 / Ultegra 6800 are reported to have a common issue with cables fraying and breaking in two ... but at least they are repairable, unlike some earlier generations of brifter!

The culprit.