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(Wow--I haven't blogged for 9 days? Oy--I'll never do a post per day this month at this rate.)
I've had all kinds of various problems with the pedals in my vintage Beetle. The throttle cable has always been moderately too long. And of course there were the problems with the brake master cylinder, which I replaced a few years ago. Recently I've even put the proper spacers in so that the master cylinder is attached correctly.
I've been fighting with the throttle cable again. There's something wierd going on with the length of it. There's a cable length that's supposed to be for Beetles from 1972 to 1974, which includes mine. However, I got a couple of new cables of that length, but they're even longer than the almost-too-long cable that I took out. So I ordered an earlier model cable from Wolfsburg West (a shorter one) to see if that would help.
This is a timed photo taken with the recent "new" throttle cable
from the supposed correct year. When the photo snapped, I'm in the
car with the accelerator pedal all the way down.
The green arrow is pointing to a gap that shouldn't be there. When
the throttle is all the way open, the throttle arm to the right pushes
up against the body of the carburetor on the left. This is partly to
do wtih the too-long cable, and the slightly goofy way I had it
attached to the lever assembly at the front of the car.
The carburetor end of two of the cables. The 1972-74 is on the right,
the 1971 and earlier on the left. The green arrow shows about where
the cable clamp at the carburetor falls, so the one on the left that I
got should actually be about right.
With the new cable installed, the throttle opens all the way when you
push the accelerator pedal down.
It's hard to see (it was hard to photograph), but here's the end of
the cable at the carburetor. The red arrow points to the barrel
that's crimped onto the end of the cable. It's perfect--about half of
the barrel is ahead of the carb clamp and about half behind it.
I got the above done last night. Tonight I tied in the pedal end of
the cable with cable ties. The end of the cable just goes through a
hole in the lever that's ahead of the accelerator pedal (shown here).
It stays in just by a bend in the crimped end. It stays Ok when it's
under tension but I was afraid at some point motion of the pedal would
dis-lodge it and I'd lose throttle control. So I put cable ties on
the crimped end (indicated by the red arrow), so now it won't fall out.
I hope to get the electronic distributor in soon and start going out for test drives.