Emergency! On a trip, Broken down in parking lot & need accelerator/throttle cable

[Ralph12]

What chassis is it? Chevy/Ford Etc., I would assume that they did not change the accellerator cable from the one that came with it from the factory, you might be able to get one from a dealer.

[jcanavera]

My early days of camping were with my '66 VW bus. We pulled out the middle seat and slept on the floor. Those rear engine busses had long cable runs in tubes from the drivers position back to the engine. I had my share of broken cables. Once losing a clutch cable which led to some interesting shifting without a clutch, to having an accelerator cable snap when camping down in the Land Between the Lakes area in Tennessee.

In the accelerator cable failure I ended up opening up the tail gate and the engine cover. I had a roll of wire with me and sat Patty in the back seat pulling on the wire attached to the carburetor throttle lever to allow me to drive to a VW dealership. They had no cable in stock and said it would take 3 days to get one. I had them call a dealership in in Kentucky who had one. I ended up renting a car to drive to that dealership and bringing the cable back to the Kentucky dealership who replaced it. I bought two cables and from that time forward always drove with an extra clutch cable and an extra accelerator cable, just in case.

When you get some of these old vehicles you really need to consider having some spares of critical components that may be considered wear and tear items.

Jack

[rmkrum]

One of the more subtle failure modes for VW clutch cables was a bad battery to body ground connection. All the current went through the clutch cable, heated it up and made it brittle. Then it broke for no obvious reason...

[jcanavera]

Never heard that one.