So John Kipping finally got OEM-style choke cables for Vitesse in
stock, and one arrived with my latest order. (yay, John, my
favorite vendor) I installed it, blithely cut it to length, and
horrors! I'd cut the casing too short by about 1/2"! This was
my third choke cable installation during this rebuild (been
trying to use not quite correct types) and the other two times
I'd been careful, but this time...
After a lot of fooling around I found that while I could get it
to hook up, it was pulled so tight that the bulkhead grommets
were distorted and anytime the engine got torqued (like at
startup) it would be tugging on the dashboard.
Well, after a lot of thought I realized that I could reattach
some of the removed casing, provided I could keep the joint
rigid. Spent an hour or two prowling hardware stores trying to
find something to use as a crimp tube, and found a thing called a
"roll pin". I don't know what this is actually for, but it's
effectively a steel tube, split lengthwise. By putting back some
of the removed length of casing, then sliding this over the joint
and crimping it I was able to restore the cable casing to its
proper length. Thankfully I'd left the control cable itself a
little long...
So why not just order another new cable? That would have been
giving in, cheating, admitting weakness...
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