1. Home
  2. Volkswagen, hot (Aircooled)
  3. Heater cables

Heater cables

I'm trying to replace the cables that work the heat levers in my '74 beetle sedan, as one of them snapped recently. However, I can't get the new cables through the tubes. The tubes are bent close to where the cables are supposed to exit and I'm pretty sure that's where they're getting hung up. I don't thing more grease is that answer. There's a fair amount of grease in the tubes already. My next resort is to saw the tubes off a little shorter to make it a more straight shot, but I'd like to avoid that if someone knows a trick that might work.

Ryan J. Mills

Reply to
Ryan J. Mills
Loading thread data ...

Can you feed the wire in from the other direction? Or maybe feed in a disposable wire, tape it to the heater cable and pull it through?

(I've never needed to do that so I don't know if that is possible but those are things I do when I'm fishing wiring through walls in houses.)

Reply to
Michael Cecil

Reply to
Grahame Rumballe

More grease certainly won't help get the wire in, but once you have the tube clear, put as much grease in there as you can, just to keep things from rusting up again.

See if you can work a wire in the tube from the rear. That will tell you whether the tube is actually bent or not. The tube should point right at its destination on the heat exchanger, so some bend there may be normal. If the bend is clearly too much, just straighten it. It's steel and will bend fairly easily if you just give yourself the right tool and don't overdo it. The right tool may be a box end wrench, or a larger steel tube.

I have made a kind of drill bit from 3' welding rods or coat hanger wire. Just pound the end of the wire slightly flat and chuck the other end in a drill. Use it like a sewer auger. Run the drill slowly.

-

----------------------------------------------- Jim Adney snipped-for-privacy@vwtype3.org Madison, WI 53711 USA

-----------------------------------------------

Reply to
Jim Adney

Try blowing compressed air through the lines and then once clear you can use the same air gun to blow a string line through them. This string line can then be used to pull the cable back the other way.

Hope this helps, Peter

Reply to
Lynne Towell

I appreciate everyone's suggestions but nothing really worked. I ended up cutting off the ends of the tubes and the cables went right in. After I did that it occurred to me that the cables I replaced must have been the originals. In which case, the cables were probably fed through the tubes, then the metal pieces on the ends were crimped on AFTER they were fed through. In any case, cutting the tubes did the trick.

Ryan J. Mills

Reply to
Ryan J. Mills

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.