My shift indicator cable broke yesterday - any idea if a replacement is available, or is this a salvage yard item?

Anyone ever fixed this by replacing the thin cable? Not sure you can even do this as I haven't pulled the cluster yet. I'm not sure how the cable connects to the indicator part on the instrument panel...

ryan

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RG Newell

1984 300D
1972 250
1986 560SL
1991 300CE

It can be done. Go to a fishing shop and get some lead line, the stainless steel coated with plastic cable used to catch toothy fish. You'll need to check if your cable housing is in good shape. If it's bent too far and the plastic inside is cracked open, then you'll need a new housing too. Determine whether the location of the break is inside the cable housing and that will tell you if you need to change that too. You can get new cable housing at a bicycle shop, get the small diameter stuff for derailleur cable on road bikes. Now if you've done all that you might have a chance of getting it all back together.

I've done it twice myself, and it would have only been once if I had replaced the cable housing the first time.

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-Matthew Anker
1970 280SEL 2.8L

It's almost to the jewelry-maker level of repair. I did this very repair recently on my W115 220; same setup as use on W111, 108, 114, 115, etc.

I received guidance from another who had done a number of these. He also gave me Kevlar cable/thread to do the job and said that he had never had one come back yet over the years, so the Kevlar seems to be more robust to abrasion wear that these die of.

There are two interesting parts inside that may cause some degree of difficulty. The 'pellet' at the end of the cable that mounts in the wind-up mechanism has the cable soldered in a cross-drilled hole. This isn't the easiest piece to reclaim.

I've heard of just knotting the end of the cable repeatedly to get enough of a lump to stay in the pocket of the wind-up wheel being an effective solution.

I machined a new pellet with a cross-drilled hole and knotted and epoxied the end of the Kevlar in a counter-drilled 'pocket' in the cross-drilled hole. To give you an idea of the scale, the pellet is about 0.100" diam and about the same in height. The cross-drilled hole is about Ø0.020".

The other troublesome part is the 'peg' that drives the pointer on its sliding rail guides. This peg is cylindrical; about Ø0.045" and fits into a hole in the pointer, but the interesting part is the anchoring of this peg on the wire/cable/thread. It is anchored by a slot in the back end of the peg that is crimped closed with the wire/cable/thread in the slot. The movement of the wire then moves the pointer back and forth.

This 'peg' is difficult to reclaim because it's made of brass that is now nicely age hardened and work hardened from crimping and opening the crimp, which you can do with a razor blade, but it wants to break pretty easily.

I made a new peg out of copper and put the slot in with a jewelers saw and crimped and epoxied the thing on to the Kevlar cable.

Lastly, I made a new stirrup to go at the end of the cable where it goes on the hook at the shift rod going up the column. For this I use stainless steel wire Ø0.020" and used small round-nosed pliers to form the thing with some little eyelets for the Kevlar.

Knotting the cable to get the pointer in the right position is easy and straightforward. You also have a lot of adjustment in the adjusting barrel.

The first step is to take the unit out and study it, then you will see these small parts.

It's not the easiest repair, but you won't get dirty doing it and the cost of a new unit is ~$350 I think and that wire doesn't sustain the abrasion wear very well.