Rover Time, Part X: Making a new choke cable

The choke cable in the Rover was good and stuck, and no amount of penetrating oil that I was able to spray into the housing was going to change that.  Not only that, but in trying to get the cable free I had broken the sheath away from the housing. The cable has to be able to work in both directions, so that was no good.

I took the cable out of my parts car, but that one had a broken cast-metal housing, and it couldn’t be fixed. Are new cables available? I couldn’t find them online. Then I noticed that the $15 choke cable I’d bought for the SU conversion I’m doing on the Spitfire had a very similar kind of housing, just longer. Hmmm.

This shows the original Rover housing. The bezel between the hook-shaped handle and the threaded part is cast in.

The threaded portion on the Spit cable was longer, and the bezel wasn’t cast in, but threaded on. It’s not an exact match for the Rover part, but it’s close enough. (Now that I notice it, the choke cable for earlier Spitfires seems to have the same cast-in bezel.)

The Spitfire housing even has the same three holes the Rover part has. They’re for the contacts for a switch for a choke warning lamp, which the Rover has and the Triumph doesn’t. All that I had to do to adapt this part was to shorten the threaded shaft with a hacksaw, and to drill out a keyway that was cast into the part.

The other end of the cable has a round ball at the end, which is inserted into a connector for the two separate cables that go to the choke linkages on the two carbs. I wanted to keep the old parts-car cable for its handle; the newer cable had a square knob. I needed to remove the ball from the end of the old cable to get it out. Playing around with my soldering iron, I discovered that the ball was just a brass bit that was soldered onto the end of the cable. There was no problem in removing it.

Then there was the ferrule. The old one was crimped to the end of the sheath, and had a groove so that it could be held in place with a clip — remember, it has to work in both directions. I used a bike cable ferrule on the new cable, and turned a groove in it by chucking it into my drill press and holding a hacksaw blade against it as it turned. A wire crimper locked it onto the end of the sheath.

Everything’s in place, and it all works. Which means I can start the engine from cold without having to hold the chokes open with a bent piece of wire.

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