When I got my $250.00 work van a few years ago, it came with a brand new throttle cable which I quickly installed. Over the last couple months, the cable has been slowly seizing up in the sheath. Last night it decided to get real tight & the return spring on the throttle body was not strong enough to pull it back any more. I was at my storage lot which is about 5 mins. from home & decided to Mcgyver it until I could get a new cable today. I removed the gas pedal & cable from the floor & throttle body, drilled a small hole in the engine cover & grabbed a small piece of rope & now I have a fully functional "throttle cable". It is a little hokey, but it got me home & I will have a new cable on later today.

 

wow.... LOL... Glad you made it home, in a related tale, A while back in my youth I had a 62 ford econoline pick-up, I put a small block chevy ( in the bed) , a turbo 400, and a 12 bolt posi rear in her, the drive shaft was about 14Inches long, LOL.... I used a teleflex cable for the shifter ( out of a boat) and was waiting on a boat throttle set up ( big aluminum shoe, and a really long cable) affair for the throttle, well I couldn't wait so I also used a piece of rope, I thought it was the coolest thing, of course I had to try out the truck had little skinny tires up front and mickey thompson n-50's on 15 x 10" slots out back, well I decided I would give this pupply a WOT moment and you guessed it it stuck there..... LOL... I jammed on the brakes and proceeded to have THEE smokiest burnout on Pond Path ( Lake grove long Island) that ever was, when I released the brakes the damn nose would start to rise up ( read: wheelie) as my math skills and Cg was way off.... LOL... all this while my old man who was outside mowing the lawn watched his son fly down the road, my eyes like pie plates tugging on the throttle rope to try and free it up..... eventually I just turned off the ignition... went to the back of the truck and manually closed the throttle and idled that thing home.

My father was less than impressed, and said if I want to screw around like that not to do it in front of his house LOL.... those two tire tracks were there for a long time and everytime my pop would see them he would look at me, shake his head and mumble "what an A-hole" LOL.....

I did think the truck was cool though...... glad you made it back to base with no incidences....

 

Man I love story's like that. I remember times my step father gave me that look even tho he was a gear head himself. I learned a lot about physics without having to learn from a book.. Bet you wish you still had that rear engined econoline.. Those things are great, don't see many of them anymore...great story.

 

If only the Donner party had this much innovation.....

 

We took our slightly later, front engined 73 Econoline, well, Club Wagon, to a show this weekend. That old 302 ran like a raped ape on the highway.

 

they probably did, probably started out couple a guys eyeballing someone's big toe and commenting how much like a chicken wing it looked like if you squinted and progressed downward from there LOL......


I know for me and my youth I was a darwin award waiting to happen....

 

Years (and years) ago, I was the proud owner of a 49 stude, 4 dr champ, L head 6, single throat carter carb. The float used to stick quite a bit, no problem, just take a wrench and bang on the side of the float bowl. Being 17 and the smartest of my peer group, I knew the day would come when that float bowl would give up the ghost and cave in. and yep it did. But, prior to that I had decided to get another carb for the stude before that day came. went to a wrecking yard found a Nash with the same(?) bolt pattern, took it off and went on about my business feeling fat dumb and happy, I was prepared! When that fateful day came, out came the carb(remember the nash), a wrench and in a few minutes the carb was replaced. Problem....the linkage was 180 out from the stude, so instead of pushing on the gas pedal, I had to pull on it to go.......foot under gas pedal was not a good solution, but....wire from underneath gas pedal to shift lever worked fine, drove the stude like that until the day I traded it for a vespa..
ted