Once while riding our dual-sport bikes in the mountains with a buddy, 35 miles from any town or our truck, my buddy's bike rolled to a stop on the side of the trail. I went back to see why he had stopped and he said his throttle quit working. We removed the throttle assembly and found the little ball that is on the end of the cable had broken off. We had no way to tow his bike so we had to do something. While looking at the cable and what we had in our fanny packs it came to me. The small aluminum tip that screws onto a spark plug looked to have a nice round shape on the upper half of it. I always carry 4" Vice Grips with a built-in wire cutter so I cut the tip in half and crimped it to the end of the cable. It held well because the threads inside the spark plug tip gripped onto the cable. I trimmed the tip with wire cutters until it fit in the hole in the throttle pipe. I had to take all the slack out of the cable adjusters so the inner cable was long enough for the slide to reach the bottom of the carburetor. I told my buddy not to pull on the throttle real hard and thought it might last until we could make it back to the truck, even if we had to re-do it a couple of times, we could eventually make it back. We made it back with no further problems.

I saw my buddy a month later and asked if he had bought a new cable yet and he said he had still been riding the bike every day around town and it still was working fine. Eventually my buddy bought a new cable and when we installed it I took his old cable and grabbed the crimped spark plug tip and pulled on it as hard as I could and it would not come off. We could not believe how well it held to the cable! I hope this tip might help someone someday.

Credits: Tip submitted by Randy Ressell

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