repairing a choke cable

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audiocontr
United States of America
Posts: 1868
Joined: Fri May 01, 2009 1:30 pm
Location: Buffalo NY

repairing a choke cable

Post by audiocontr »

The choke cable finally broke right before the choke mounting point of the carb. As you know, repeated tightening will tend to twist that cable at the mounting point, and mine finally broke off. Its now millimeters too short. There is not enough give to stretch the cable as its ran right now to extend it those few MMs. I know i should replace the whole thing, but given so much of the internal cable is exposed, could i just solder, or crimp a small extension onto the end?

There is plenty of room to fully enable the choke, where a welded extension would not interfere with travel. Could i just tin and solder an overlap?
1973 712m
1968 Haflinger
1965 Pathfinder
1978 GMC Palm Beach (Hey, its got 6 wheels!!)
Heinkeljb
Great Britain
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Re: repairing a choke cable

Post by Heinkeljb »

I am not sure that ordinary solder / plumbers solder will have enough mechanical strength - might work a couple of times, but it will fail very soon after you have done the repair. Silver solder has higher mechanical strength, but requires higher temperature to melt.

Best repair would be to take cable off completely and then use a TIG welder to weld a suitable length of welding rod the end. You can always file the excess weld off the joint if it turns out that particular part of the cable has to go inside the sleeve.

As you have already pointe out, best long term solution would be to replace it with a new cable.

John

p.s.
Anything other than a straight forward mechanical repair using a sleeve with two grub screws to pinch on to the old existing cable and a new piece of welding rod will require you to remove the choke cable from the vehicle as the risk of fire is very high working right near the carb!
Jim Molloy
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Re: repairing a choke cable

Post by Jim Molloy »

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audiocontr
United States of America
Posts: 1868
Joined: Fri May 01, 2009 1:30 pm
Location: Buffalo NY

Re: repairing a choke cable

Post by audiocontr »

Just replaced it as Jim listed. A little challenging in the front. Worked out.
1973 712m
1968 Haflinger
1965 Pathfinder
1978 GMC Palm Beach (Hey, its got 6 wheels!!)
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