1986 Fuel Door Cable

[gha8066]

Anyone had this situation? I pull in to gas up, pull the fuel door knob & it comes out in my hand, along with a piece of rusty cable. Yikes! The idiot light on the gas gauge is screaming at me already. I make it home okay, and go onto this form to find out that a flat shoe string wiggled back & forth starting from the backside of the car wiggling towards the front, then pulling towards the front of the car releases the door. Whew. So now I can get some gas. I order the new cable from Pelican, of course, and it arrives about 10 days later (I'm in Canada, so we have the border to deal with, etc.) I open the door in the same manner, and after removing the rubber fender protector I see that the cavity in the fender is half full of water. After sucking out the water with a turkey baster, I find the quite ample sized drain hole at the bottom is filled up with 27 yrs of sludge. So I feed a 2 foot piece of bailing wire that I got at a lumber yard up & down, in & out, pouring water in alternately, until finally I get all of the crude out onto the ground from the exit hole in front of the drivers door bottom. With it running clear, I sprayed lots of WD down the drain hole, and rinsed it a lot. Now to steel wool the bit of surface rust & paint the area a bit, just in case.
Now to install the new cable. Should be simple, right? It came out easy. I fish it thru the channel from the dash, and it keeps on hitting the release mechanism, but will not go thru the "fork" at the bottom of the mechanism so that I can reinstall the tiny little cable lock with a tiny set screw on it. WTF. A few hours pushing and twisting. Must be a trick to this. I scour the internet, look in my manual, trying to at least see a pic of where this little cable pops out of the fender wall, so that I can get a better handle on this. Of course, you can't see the cable as it exits the fender, but you can feel it poking the mechanism. Crap, am I going to have to just use the shoestring trick forever? Great for resale, if ever. So after 3 days of trying here and there, I finally find a post on here that mentions it might be advantageous to make a 45 degree ben about 1 inch back from the end of the cable, feed it thru, twisting as you push. Bingo, 1 minute later, the cable pops thru the little fork on the mechanism, I get the teeny cable stop secured, put on the rubber fender protector, and I am in business. I burnt the shoe lace in a 3 beer ceremony. Thank you Tech Forums.