Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

   The other day I went a friends house and found him sitting out back.  He was working on his bicycle and found his shift cable was stuck.  He took off the cable ran it through a funnel.   He taped the tunnel bottom to where the cable exits the sheath.  He then mounted the cable and funnel to a verticle portch post and put in penetrating oil to drip through the cable over several hours.  It was a neat setup. 

   Later that day I went to Harbor Freight and found the Cable Oiler below.  The cable slips in at the gold part and the oiler screwed to the sheath.  The bottom (not shown) is fit with rubber that has a tiny hole for the cable and a fine slit so the cable can get to the hole.  The cable and oiler can then be held up and oil put in the top resivoir section.  Nice. 

   Cables on snowblowers frequently get rust frozen.  One chute hood adjust cable on an Ariens is $100 and one Snapper cable is $120.  Rust freezing is common on both cables. 

You can go to any decent bicycle shop and have custom made cables manufactured from stainless steel for a fraction of those costs.  Bring in the old cable and they can reproduce it.

I lube my cables using WD-40 and the tiny straw that fits in the nozzle of the can.  If you want something heavier than WD-40 use it and spray it in the same way.  Easy, fast, cheap and effective. 

The expensive cables are assembles usually with single thick wire, cases with return springs, special ends, handles & etc to make them pricy.  Saving one is a big deal. 

Interesting on the bike shop.  They probably have braded cables but I'll have to visit a bike shop to see what they have.   

We used to buy a lot of cable in bulk from places like Rotory corp. , Stans  and others.  

We would buy the cable solid steel, or braided in diffrent sizes.. Plus the  outer housing was also available in plastic,  plastic wrapped steel, or plastic wrapped steel with teflon insert..

Most of the time we would try to just buy the OPE cable (just for the time involved),  but if we had some odd unit we could not find a cable to install,   we would strip needed parts off the old cable (throttle quadrant ends, springs and such) and build our own to fit...

Friiy