Hi Stuart,

Thank you for this reminder.  I’ve had the new cable for a couple of years waiting for a good opportunity to have it installed or to do it with a VW friend.  I noticed mine had broken bellows, the plastic protector and I was concerned.  
        Your experience and recommendation will move this to the top of my to do list now that some of the other unexpected work is done. 

Any additional tips from you and others are appreciated.  Often when I do this job with a friend My info from the list or vendors combined with the friends skills result in successful work! 

So details on the process are appreciated!

Eric Caron 
85 GL Auto 

> On Jun 11, 2019, at 2:16 PM, Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Accelerator cables have a hard life on the automatic. The cable attaches to
> the kickdown lever on the tranny and has a lot of pulling to do for both the
> kickdown and throttle.  At 160k miles my son's 87 finally broke Sunday. He
> was returning from a 300 mile trip and it broke 3 miles from me and my home
> shop, His first "ride of shame" since purchase 5 years ago. He was able to
> coast off the very busy road to a safe parking place. These vans have good
> "carma".  The cable is $35 with shipping from our vendors, and takes about
> an hour to replace the first time, mostly due to tight space around the
> tranny.
> 
> 
> 
> The cable wears at the point where it exits a protective tube and rubs on
> the metal end fitting there.  Lube your new cable there  (under the flimsy
> protective bellows)  before installing and be sure to check that you have
> full throttle when the pedal is  floored and that the tranny kicks down when
> floored while driving. I recommend doing this job every 100k now.  Be
> careful not to damage the bellows when you  install it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Stuart