Bad Throttle Cable on PD 4014

 
 I’m stuck and stuck again.  I have discovered that I have a bad throttle cable in my bus.  You may wonder why this translates into me being stuck.  My bus is somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 feet long.  The engine is in the back of the bus.  So a cable snakes from the front of the bus to the rear engine about 35 feet away.  The problem with the cable is that it has kind of spread out.  It’s a braided cable and either it untwisted a bit or something so that it does not move back and forth with ease.   This is a picture of an ornamental iron design that sort of describes what happened to my cable.  The cable travels through a casing and since it is now larger than the casing, it binds up when being moved back and forth.

      So why don’t I just go the bus store and buy a cable.  Did I mention that the bus is about 54 years old?  It’s just a braided cable and you can buy those at the hardware store.  So what’s the problem?  Sizing.  The current cable is too small.   I know this because when I took the hardware off the end of the cable I found an extra piece of hardware.   In order to grab the cable there is a clamping system which uses a small wedge to hold the cable.  It looks a little like a section of the bracket is missing.    You can see from the photo on the left that cable shows through the bracket.  This is where the bit goes that clamps down on and holds the cable.  When I took mine apart I found an addition metal piece that cupped the cable effectively narrowing the passage the cable is housed in.  When I put the cable back in the hardware without that extra piece of metal I could not get an effect clamp.

      I am not sure of the exact size to use.  I tried a 3/16 cable that works but I don’t know if it is loose enough.  There are problems with things when they are too tight as well as too loose.  I search the various books that I have on my bus and there is no indication of the size of the cable.  In addition the cable in this photo looks a little like a screw.  My cable looks more like a rope.  Another difference to ponder.