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The inner wire of my tack cable broke on by BB '70. I ordered a replacement from Corvette Central. The broken one I took out measures 20 1/4" long. The replacement was 23" long (all the vendor catologs I looked at also state 23" long). When I installed the 23" long cable I knew it was too long due to the excessive bends that were necessary in order to force fit it. Well, it lasted about 200 miles and is now broken again.
Are BB cables the same as SB cables? Anybody know were I can get a 20 3/4" cable?
From: At my Bar drinking and wrenching in Lafayette Colorado
Are you replacing just the inner cable, or the entire cable/housing assembly? If you're just replacing the inner cable you can cut it to length before swaging the end onto it. If you're replacing the entire cable/housing assembly you need to orient your distributor in the optional Service Bulletin orientation to straighten out the tach drive cable.
I believe the cables are the same for both BB and SB but i could be wrong.
Most times the distributor lines up good if the vac can is pointing to #8 cylinder. The non tach-drive chevy's line up at #6 but this bends the cable sometiems causing a failure. Lars can correct me here but I think the dist pointing at #6 lines up a couple of holes for better oiling of the dist shaft and bushings. Moving to #8 kind of blocks the hole alignment.
Here's what I did to try and get the best of both. I milled the holes oval shaped so I can install the dist with the vac at #8 for better cable alignment and still get some oiling on the shaft.
Good luck,
Gary