Snow Thrower cable repair question.

[mattl]

I have a vintage Sears Snow Thrower(blower...)  If I recall my mom bought it in '68 or '70 for my dad.  Anyway it had not been used for 20 years until a couple of winters ago and it started and ran like a champ.  Problem is the control cables are non functional.  They are also NLA.  Question is there any way to revive them?  Are there generic cables?

 

There are two cables and both are frozen.  I'm sure they are corroded in the casing from non use.  Last year I used clamps to engage the blower section, not the best way to use it.  Looks like I will need it again this winter and thought I'd have a bit more time to get it in shape.  Suggestions?

 

 

 

[stevet]

PB Blaster to the rescue!

I had an old Craftsman Snowblower when I still lived up in Queens and Long Island. It had the solid cable that ran inside of a corrugated outer jacket not unlike a piece of miniature BX cable. Looked just like an old style choke cable for that matter!. The cable was kind of stuck too so I removed it and soaked it with Kroil penetrating oil and it eventually came unstuck.

I have had great success with PB Blaster penetrant. I would remove the cable and try soaking it as well from one end and then the other and then laying the cable flat for a while to let the oil spread out inside the cable. Then see if you can work it loose that way.

You can always try an auto parts store and see if they have a choke cable you can use and adapt it to your snowblower. Looks like it is going to be a winter you would want to have a working blower for!
Good luck and be prepared!

 

[lamont]

NAPA sells a "PTO cable". It's for power take off's in trucks, BUT it's strong enough to do anything you need to do. Cut-to-length, pretty inexpensive and did I say strong?

If that is too big, a small-engine repair place should have a throttle cable that is of smaller gauge and should work. If it's a throttle cable on the blower that is frozen , I would just lock throttle at full and use kill switch to shut it off. I never found me using a lower throttle setting than MAX when using my blower....(see my location..)

 

[kb0nes]

I'd try the PB Blaster too. If you can get the inner wire to move then you may be able to work it back into use. If it did free up I might be tempted to pull the wire out of the outer sheath and clean and grease it well. The drawback with doing that is it might be impossible to slide the wire back in if the inside of the jacket is badly rusted.

I would imagine that any decent power equipment servicing dealer could get generic cables that would work. I'm not sure how heavy these cables are but I'd bet you could just make your own from standard Bowden cable cable stock. Perhaps even the heavier brake cables like those used on a mountain bike would work out!

At least you aren't dealing with the mess as shown in this photo. Not sure the snow thrower would really help much here. This photo was making the rounds on Twitter today, its from the Buffalo, NY area where they got walloped!

 

[mattl]

I'll have to get the machine out of my storage shed and see exactly what is needed.  I've been working from memory, all the snow got me thinking.  I do have several cans of PB blaster, will try that first.