Heater Cable removal - any thoughts please?

[Raggles]

Does anyone have any tips for heater cable removal and replacement?

I am finally getting round to replacing mine .. the ends have broken off at some time in the past and I can't move the cables in the tubes at all. To date have tried squirting Plusgas (as much as I can - difficult with the cables still in) down either end of each tube to little effect.

Anyone who has experience or ideas of how to get them out - or perhaps run new cables in parallel, any help/suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[gas1man]

Tap along the full length as much as possible first and when and if you try to pull them out, twist in the same direction as they were
made as it will tighten the swirl if anything and possibly help loosening it up. Good luck.

J & P

 

[Raggles]

Tap along the full length as much as possible first and when and if you try to pull them out, twist in the same direction as they were
made as it will tighten the swirl if anything and possibly help loosening it up. Good luck.

J & P

Thanks ... will give it a go.

 

[hobbo]

Changed mine a few years ago. Firstly removed inner cable and saved it. Then removed as much as possible the outer cable with pliers even tying it to the towball of my car and pulling it slowly, the outer cable tends to rust in the tube. Took the inner cable and cut it at least half in length, and then cut other various of lengths from other half. Took the shortest and kinked the end about 1/8 inch, used a pistol drill and entered this down the tube scarifying as went along blowing out with the compressor. Repeated with other lengths ends kinked from front and rear blowing out as you go, finishing with the length that gets above half way from both ends. Hope you find this useful, sorry about the length of reply, but it worked new ones in with plenty of lubrication.

 

[gagvanman]

Couldn't get one of mine out at all no matter what I tried. In the end I ran the new one along side the old one and secured with tie wraps.

 

[Raggles]

Couldn't get one of mine out at all no matter what I tried. In the end I ran the new one along side the old one and secured with tie wraps.

That's a fall back its good to know about ... did you run the cable in anything?

 

[Dickie524]

My van has the belly pans on underneath, full length, so was terrified when I tried this last weekend as a snap or failure would mean massive works.

Make sure you remove the plastic/ nylon 'ends' at the rear of the van, I hadn't realised they trap a ferrule at the end of the cable. I squirted them with WD and EP90 from a syringe, which is thick but creeps over time.

I then pulled from the front until I could feel the outer wound sheathing starting to unravel, then tied it off there, and went round the back to push inside the tube with some wire from there - this then sprung forwards under the tension of the unravelling of the outer sheath. I repeated this a few times and eventually got them both out.

Next step would have been to remove the inner wire as suggested, but thought that was a 1-way street so didn't want to do that unless as a last resort - thankfully it didn't get to that...

Good luck!