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Check your throttle cable

my kids took the truck

my kids took the truck

1/2 ton status
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Driving once a week, these seem to last four years. I caught this one just by chance. Those are two threads holding.

I sprayed some silicon into the cable sleeve and that made a difference in pedal feel.

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I haven't had a problem with the Lokar cables I've ran but they haven't been daily driven either. The OP's cable looks like a bad crimp job to me :dunno:
 
my cable on my 78 is OEM and chugging along but I'm going to be replacing it with a Drive By Wire setup...
 
skunked said:
The OP's cable looks like a bad crimp job to me :dunno:
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I'd agree, and I'll also add that it looks an awful lot like a road bicycle style brake cable as well. At least that end crimp fitting does....I don't know if the cable diameter would be the same. If they are, you can get just those inner wires at just about any bicycle shop for a 1/4 of the cost of a Lokar cable. I've never used the Lokar stuff, so I don't know what they're running as far as cables, but I have used bicycle cable parts successfully to make various other automotive cables over the years with good results.

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only had 1 cable fail on me . almost broke and wedged at 1500 rpm or so till i got a new the next day ad the dealer . was a 1996 c3500 350 vortec .
 
urbex said:
it looks an awful lot like a road bicycle style brake cable as well.
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I will take a look at those. They probably have a lot more in the way of customer feedback just out of a larger volume of sales. How many Lokar cables are on daily drivers?

Who would have thought the annoying guy pedaling along taking up the lane on a winding road is actually road testing my throttle cable...
 
forest said:
The crimp is tight. All the cable is still in there. It is sheared off like when you bend a paper clip back and forth until it breaks.
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I'd have to see your throttle linkage setup to comment further but a reoccurring failure like this leads me to believe you might have another issue.

forest said:
Who would have thought the annoying guy pedaling along taking up the lane on a winding road is actually road testing my throttle cable...
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carry some string
 
skunked said:
I'd have to see your throttle linkage setup ... a reoccurring failure [means] you might have another issue.
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Linkage is more or less standard: It is a Lokar cable bracket at the carburetor. At the pedal it is the OEM arm. The firewall passthrough is OEM.

This problem isn't as recurring as I first recalled. The previous Lokar cable never failed. I changed from a Holley to a Quadrajet and had to get a new cable and recut to length.

That first cable went on in 1994. This second cable that failed was from 2014. Third cable is 2018 (without looking at manufacturer date). Has Lokar changed their source of wire rope between 1994 and 2014?
 
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kennyw said:
In 20 years I would expect they have used a dozen suppliers for cable.
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2014 was stainless made from potmetal. Lokar might want to start sending random samples to a metallurgy lab.

(Edit to add batch number of replacement cable, I will update with how long this one lasts)

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Based on how often I go through the bike derailleur cables, I wouldn't think that would be a good alternative.
 
Abusfullofnuns said:
Based on how often I go through the bike derailleur cables, I wouldn't think that would be a good alternative.
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You must be running cheap cables and not maintaining them properly then. Not to mention a derailleur cable is considerably smaller than a brake cable, it's subjected to far more dirt and debris and it's under considerably more stress than it would be in a throttle cable function along with having to be quite a bit more precise with modern index shifters.

We weren't replacing them anywhere near as often before the days of 8/9/10 speed indexed systems.
 
RootBreaker said:
my cable on my 78 is OEM and chugging along but I'm going to be replacing it with a Drive By Wire setup...
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You're crazy dude! DBW is horrible on 8.1s if you ever plan on doing any wheeling. Not as bad on road trucks or anything with an automatic. Definitley no bueno with a manual trans off road
 
Larry said:
You're crazy dude! DBW is horrible on 8.1s if you ever plan on doing any wheeling. Not as bad on road trucks or anything with an automatic. Definitley no bueno with a manual trans off road
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We will start here and i can always swap later. Plus im in area skinny pedal to floor. Not much to that lol
 
Out of a dozen or more GM vehicles,I've had only two throttle cables fail that I can recall...only one snapped,the other one in a square body pickup had the wire saw into the inner nylon core of the housing and it got "creaky",you had to press harder and harder to get it to move,then it'd open the throttle way too much for good control in traffic or a parking lot!.

The broken one decided to snap miles from home of course..
I save every throttle cable I can get,and have several leftovers from engine swaps and my junkyard hikes,but they do you zero good at home..:(

I got lucky at a hardware store not far from where it snapped,they stocked spools of wire rope as small as 3/32",and I bought 4 feet of it and two of the brass barrel nut things for each end,and was able to pull the remains of the busted one thru from the pedal side,and slide the new cable thru the housing without taking it off,one end of the wire rope looked like it had super glue on it to keep it from fraying,and it stayed intact to get it thru the housing and the two barrel nuts on..
The connection at the carb was not ideal,but it gave enough throttle to get me home OK..and drive it to work a few days until I got a new cable..(All my "spares" were too long or too short!)..

I bet in a pinch the solid core cable off a lawn mower throttle cable would work..I've used the wire rope on some lawn mower safety handle cables and other controls with success--long as the original housing is intact you can re-rope most cables...I can braze the cable or ends on with my smallest torch tip..

My worst experience with a broken throttle cable was in my '63 VW Beetle..in order to get home,I had to use a long hunk of speaker wire tied to the carb,and run up thru the louvers under the rear window,and tied off to the drivers side mirror on the door..pushing the string away from you opened the throttle..
I took the highway home--15 miles at 55 mph and it was 30 degrees out,plus whatever wind chill 55 mph makes..my fingers felt frostbitten by the time I got home,and hurt bad for days..
Replacing the cable in that car kind of sucked--I did the clutch cable at the same time,so the pedal cluster wouldn't have to come out again...it was pretty frayed and ready to snap..
 
diesel4me said:
Out of a dozen or more GM vehicles,I've had only two throttle cables fail that I can recall...
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@diesel4me you always deliver.

Back when I was a dgaf laborer I used "my throttle cable broke on the way to work" as my oh shit I overslept an hour excuse. A forman wanted all the details and so I gave him a story like what you just had of me driving down the freeway with my head out the window pulling on the end of the cable. He says, so, why is it fixed now. I was like, so here is the cool part... I saw a parts store in Rockland and wouldn't you know they had a throttle cable in stock for an '80s Mazda. I was worried he was going to ask me to pop the hood and show him. He said, get to work.

I learned that story the year before when a foreman was late for work and he told it. He'd actually forgotten the job radios and had to turn back to get them. Guess who was responsible to charge the radios each night after that...
 
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