[T3] Have another question on 73 T-3 front seat cable

[Jim Adney]

On 31 Dec 2019 at 22:16, William Jahn wrote:

>  I don't see any housing over the cables on either side,

I found my cable, and I said a few wrong things about it earlier.

The housing covers most of the cable. There's less than 1" of travel 
available. The housing has anchor tabs at both ends, each intended to be 
held down with a screw, and one of them has a slotted hole which looks like 
an adjustment. The wire is solid, not stranded, and has fittings attached at 
both ends, so you can't remove the housing without cutting the wire.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that the people who recovered your seats cut the 
OE wire because it attached the seat bottom to the seat back, and it was 
going to be hard to take it apart. Then they made up something to replace 
the part they destroyed. It may have worked for awhile but eventually failed 
on the L seat because that one got used much more often.

OTOH, there's a puzzle here. The part number, taken from my NOS cable 
purchased in 1981, is 311 881 257, but that number does not appear in my 
parts book at all, and there's nothing similar shown. All the other late seat 
parts ARE shown. That number DOES appear in my '84 and '89 price lists. I 
would check my microfilm, but I no longer have a way to view it. My best 
magnifier is not strong enough.  

Without the parts book entry, I can't prove when this cable was used, but I'm 
pretty sure it was used on all the late front seats, from mid-72-on. 
Nevertheless, it's possible that this is a revised part, meant to replace an 
earlier part, or collection of parts, that was found to be troublesome.

I have another '73 here that I should look at.

I found one of these cables on German ebay:

https://is.gd/HUfamr

and, yes, that's exactly what I have.

It looks like this cable would not function correctly if one of the housing fixing 
screws had fallen out, or if it had simply slipped out of adjustment. OTOH, if 
you have a stranded cable, then someone has replaced this part with 
something makeshift and all bets are off.

-- 
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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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