New throttle cable for the Bandit

I love it when the stars align, and my bike parts arrive on my workout routine “rest day”. I came home from work yesterday to find my new throttle cable on the doorstep and no obligations or plans for the rest of the night. Hurray!

I wanted to replace the cable because I had managed to bend the crap out of it the most recent time I pulled the carbs. Sigh.

I was particularly impressed with the amount of junk inside the throttle cable housing. Aside from the ubiquitous spider web, there was an actual spider nest (complete with huddled up dead and dried out spider, poor thing) and a piece of trash. The trash made me happy. How do you get trash inside the throttle cable housing?

Once the cable was disconnected at the housing, it was easy to unthread through the various zip ties and cable clamps. I pulled the carbs to make it easier to remove the cable, spilling gas all over myself in the process. It’s a minor miracle that I’ve never set the garage on fire.

I didn’t really care about bending the old cable while disconnecting it from the carbs, so I just sort of yanked and twisted until it came out. đŸ™‚

Getting the new cable on was a little trickier. Obviously the “yank and twist” method wouldn’t work very well, since that’s how the old one got kinked in the first place. Fortunately, some rusty and rattly old piece of my brain clicked into place for the first time, and it occurred to me that it’d be about eight million times easier to install the cable if I were to just remove the choke shaft lever. It’s obviously meant to come off, since the little black tabs holding it to the carbs slide out of place easily, and the whole thing just pops off.

Why the manual doesn’t mention this stuff, I don’t know.

With the choke shaft lever out of the way, I propped the butterfly valves open with a small clamp so that the little throttle cable inlet piece was rotated towards me. Then it was pretty easy to just feed in the new throttle cable. It took a little bit of yanking and twisting, but nowhere near as much as it did before.

I put everything back together and whaddya know, the throttle action is a lot smoother now. Go figure. I haven’t done a test ride yet, since the bike wouldn’t start last night (no gas in the carbs due to it all spilling out all over me instead). By tonight gravity should have worked its magic, and I’ll give ‘er a go around the block.

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