New Throttle Cable Installed!

The old throttle cable was in very poor condition, so as I work at putting things together to fire the motor, I added replacing the old one to my to-do list.

I ended up picking this up off the shelf from O'Reilly's Auto Parts for $25. Not too bad, all things considered. After removing the old cable, I cleaned up the stock bracket and bolted it in place on the intake. A couple of tweaks with the Channel Locs squared the cable up with the throttle arm on the carb.

The mounting post came in the kit and just replaced the ball-and-socket style that was on the carb. Using the existingthrottle cable hole, I mounted the new cable in place putting a couple of gentle bends in place to work around the valve cover and leave a little slack for any movement of the engine.

After measuring 37 times, I attempted to cut the cable casing with a hacksaw, as stated in the instructions. This left frayed ends on the stainless jacket, and made zero impact on the spring steel wound inner core after more than 10 minutes of cutting with a fresh blade. So, I grabbed the angle cutter with a cutoff wheel and finished the job in seconds leaving a very clean cut.

Once again I mounted up the cable casing to prep for adding the inner cable. Originally, on my vehicle, a 3/8" diameter pin was used from the factory to hook up the old cable. After about 30 seconds of drilling I realized that it was hardened and I needed a different approach to the pedal mount. I finally opted to drill the pedal. It took three tries to get just the right angle so the cable didn't drag along the lip of the aluminum fitting. No worries.

After that, it was simply a matter of inserting the steel cable, measuring, removing, cutting to length, adding it back, feeding it into the eyelet assembly and setting the set screw. I did opt to use the clunky plastic end piece that came with the kit and is supposed to be used with their special bracket assembly. I just used a small hose clamp to hold it on the end so the cable fed through the center and didn't rub on the spring steel inner core.

The finished product looks good and works great. I just need to spray a little lithium grease up the tube to keep it lubed. Probably should have done that before installing it. Oh well.