The job was just as much fun as running gear cables in an Elan always is, but just that bit more awkward as the AB cables are so much stiffer than the originals. Eventually, I gave up trying to remove the cross gate cable entirely, so that I could do the job on the bench, and just pulled enough through (both ends were disconnected) to allow me to do the butchering/surgery under the bonnet with a nice big protective board and a sheet covering all the under-bonnet stuff to prevent any accidental cutting of bits that shouldn't be cut or swarf getting places it shouldn't.
The actual cutting of the crossgate cable rod, tapping it and assembling the rose joint and female adaptor sleeve went very quickly and easily. Replacing the cable was almost as much fun as persuading it out.
Anyway, some thoughts and comments:
- 1) Fitting the rose joint has improved the ease of gearchange with my set-up of AB cables and Dave's short shift.
2) I used a stainless M8 teflon-lined male rose joint with a double-female M8-M6 threaded connector sleeve and half-thickness lock nuts. The rose joint spherical ball is quite stiff to move. The rose joint fits on locating pin A100F6043F from SJ Sportscars, which replaces the shorter standard crossgate pin.
3) The gear change with the AB cables is not as easy as with the old standard cables, even with the rose joint fitted. Perhaps some further work on aligning the gearbox-mounted cable bracket might help. The problem is that moving/wiggling the gear lever left/right in neutral is not as "free" as with standard cables. Coming out of 5th or reverse, the gear lever will not self-centre back to the 3rd-4th position; coming out of 1st or 2nd, it will spring back to the 3rd-4th position fine. Archie reported similar problems with AB cables in this thread (even allowing for the poor condition of the second-hand cables he was fitting).
4) Before I fitted the rose joint, undue effort was needed to move the gear lever across to the left to the 1st/2nd gear position. That has been cured by the rose joint modification (and by slightly shortening the cross gate cable to prevent it from hitting the engine on its curve up from the chassis box to the cable bracket mounted on the gearbox).
5) When fitting the rose joint, I removed an extra half inch of the cross-gate inner cable rod before tapping it for the M8/M6 adapter. When originally fitting the AB cables, I found it very awkward to re-fit the gear lever assembly, i.e. to re-insert it into the chassis box far enough to allow the four allen-headed gear lever mounting bolts to be located back into the chassis. The cables seemed to be hitting something, but I could not see any obstruction within the chassis tunnel. Once everything was connected and adjusted, I noticed that the cross-gate cable was hitting the sharp edge of engine where the engine and gearbox join. The outer cable was marked, but not damaged. By shortening the cable slightly, the curve of the cable is now away from the engine, and re-inserting the gear lever assembly into the chassis tunnel was easier (I did not feel as though I was forcing it).
6) I was surprised at how little clearance there is between the rose joint threaded adapter and actuator shaft that comes out of the gear selector box (and which the gear cables are controlling). I hadn't thought to check it before I made this modification, however the clearance is just OK - it couldn't have stood a thicker rose joint/adapter sleeve assembly.
7) The gearshift is good and precise, but is not perfect, as its movement is stiffer than I like. I am therefore looking forward to more fiddling to try to align things better at the gearbox bracket, in the hope that this might help free up the action. However, the sliding movement of the AB cables is much less smooth than the standard cables, even when they are not connected to anything.
8 ) I have no plans to modify the fore-aft gear selector cable, as I am happy with its operation and feel.
9) Whatever I manage to do, this is all just trying to make the best of the AB cables/Dave's short shift set up that I have. If I was starting from scratch (or a broken set of standard cables) then I would get a set of Brit-Car-Nut's cables and short shift. These look to be beautifully engineered to address all of the issues I have encountered and they have been put together as a matched set.
I've attached a couple of poor photos to illustrate.
John
