For a 49 year old car, Zippy doesn't ask for a lot of attention. We check the oil, keep her tuned up and she does the rest. Usually.
But the other day I went to move it and the gas pedal fell to the floor and was unresponsive.
A closer check showed that the cable end that routes through the pedal had come off.
The cable is supposed to have an "S shaped piece on the end that sits in the accelerator pedal (the squiggly metal thing sticking up with the roller on it - this is what is beneath the actual pedal). Here it has fallen off. The cable runs the length of the car, first through this metal tube, and then through a flexible tube over the transaxle and then through a tube that takes it through the fan housing and finally there is a metal rod that gets connected to the carburator.
You can see the cable existing the metal tube in the fan housing and running out to the pinch bolt in the foreground. That is the accelerator linkage on the carb. Push it back and the engine revs up.
The rubbery tube runing down the picture and off to the right side is the flexible tube the cable runs in as it traverses the transaxle. This is looking up, at the rear of the passenger compartment floor. I pulled the other end off (where it connects to the tube that goes through the firewall and fan housing) The other rubber tube (with writing on it) is the fuel line.
The basic process is you disconnect the cable from the carb, and then pull the old cable out of the car.
Then you grease the new cable and feed it in to the tube from the front of the car, slowly. Eventually you will see the cable exit the flexible tube as seen here. You don't need a ton of grease, but you do want to protect it from water and help it slide.
Looking up and back towards the engine compartment, that is the hole that the metal tube comes through. I removed mine because the YouTuber whose instructions i was watching removed his - although in hindsight I don't see any reason to. And it is a pain to put back in so I am going with "don't remove it". When you get the cable through the flex line, it will mate up with the tube and then you can push the cable the rest of the way through from inside the car.
Having fun fishing the tube back through. It's a 2-person job, one to get it most of the way through from up top, and then the other below the car, using an Awl (what I did) to guide the end back through the hole in the firewall. To get decent access I removed the airbox, the carb and the distributor cap. This was the longest part of the job, and it was a waste of time.
Here is the new cable hooked into the accelerator pedal. It needs a little convincing to go through the hole but it will fit. Make sure it goes th rough from the tunnel side so that the cable pull is straight.
Here is the far end, pulled through the pinch bolt. If you pull this snug and then pinch it, you should be able to get full travel out of the carb linkage.
And voila, it's not a paper weight anymore. :)
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