Greetings Friends and Allies,
Quite a lot to report on, much of it pesky, detail stuff, but my education may in turn help others down the line. I am nothing if not a sharer.
Long-time readers may recall that in installing the replacement engine I'd initially made something of a meal of routing and positioning the wires and cables in that nasty bit of real estate betwixt the rear of the motor and the firewall. As mentioned a couple of times already, doing this over again, I'd not have followed Clark's direction to pull the engine wiring harness with the engine, and I'd have worked to better document or somehow retain/understand how it all needed to go back together.
The last bugaboo of this learning curve for me to resolve was the heater control valve, and I'm catching back up to my own story when I remind myself and you that when I last wrote, I'd come to the conclusion that the bowden cable 944 572 647 00 (I just typed that from memory ... it's etched in my brain) needed to be replaced in order for me to gain control of the heater valve, itself necessary before I could reinstall the center console.
This damage was enough to prevent the clip from grabbing the cable's sheath.
My previous Clever-Trevor idea to use a bicycle-shop sourced ferrule to add diameter to the cable sheathing was ineffective ... it made it to broad for the spring clip to grasp.
Well, at this point 944 572 647 00 is NLA. My 964 friend in Fairfield, Conn, reminded me that DC Automotive would likely have a used one, and indeed they did/do. But in the meantime I'd removed the dastardly cable assembly entirely and pondered it with the luxury of having it on my (custom-made by me, tall-guy version) workbench. No rocket science: a bowden cable assembly is comprised of an inner wire or cable, and an outter sheath. On mine, the latter was damaged to the extent that the two spring steel clips, one on the heater valve itself, the other on the HVAC panel in the center console, could no longer grip it, resulting in lost motion when yours truly tried to actuate it.
The outer cable, I realised, was likely available locally, because it's pretty much 5mm OD bicyle cable sheathing. Off to Storrs Cycle, just off the UCONN campus, and $3 later I returned home with a suitable length to "rebuild" my Bowden cable. This entaileded straightening the factory-applied kink at one end so that I could whip off the old sheathing and install the new. That worked, but would I now be able to restore that same kink - necessary for it to connect to the heater lever - without the end of the inner wire work hardening and cracking, and thus shortening the cable?
Bicycle store-sourced sheathing measured and cut to match the original.
Short answer: yes, but it was a surprisingly frustrating and tedious job. I connected the cable to the heater control valve on the bench - to avoid doing it in situ, which meant I'd have to connect the other end - at the heater lever - in the cabin, near the console. It's now back together, the intake manifold is on and the center console is in. I'd happily never touch this area of this car or any other 924/early 944 ever again. My hands got beat to hell and, goshdarnit, I was not enjoying myself.
The same p/n spring clip is used to retain both ends of the Bowden cable, at the heater control valve and on the heat selecter lever
Two key things I did during this job, one learned here on the forum, the other a common electrician's tactic: first, I tied string to that nasty little spring steel clamp at the heater valve, a good 2' section which did enable me NOT to lose it; second, when I pulled the heater cable out of the car, I tied the same variety of string (nylon) to the in-cabin end and pulled it through the firewall grommet and out into the engine bay. Reinstallation was facilitated by the (rare, nowadays) assistance of my lovely wife, pulling the string from the driver's footwell. The Bowden cable went back, whence it had come, with nary a complaint. Connecting the end I'd manipulated back onto the heater panel lever was, by comparison, a nasty and intense little fight.
Electrician's trick of leaving a string where the cable was, to preserve its routing for reinstallation.
Two photos of the clip (same P/N at both ends of the Bowden cable, also NLA!).
This was after I'd rendered it too loose with my earlier attempts to get it installed:
While this is the clip tweaked with two pairs of needle-nose pliers, to add more springiness back in:
Of such banal and painful trivialities are the differences between something working right, or not working at all, made.
More to come. It gets better, sort of.
John