Throttle and kickdown cable upgrade.

New carb installed with old throttle cable and kickdown linkage. Not matching up.

New throttle cable and kickdown cable installed.

The engine in this 1979 Dodge Ramcharger was upgraded with an Edelbrock intake manifold and a Holley 4160 four barrel carb. The new carb was wider and longer than the stock carb so rather than mess with the old equipment, I decided to get a new throttle cable and replace the kickdown linkage with a new stainless steel cable. This cleaned up the engine compartment and took all the slop out of the old linkage. Heres the low down on the project.

There was never any intent to modify the throttle cable or the kickdown lever until I discovered that the old cable and kickdown linkage and the new carbuerator were not compatible. The old kickdown linkage consisted of a bent to fit piece of metal rod that attached the kickdown lever on the transmission to the throttle linkage on the carb. You can see it at the three o'clock position in the first photo. There was a series of pivoting rods, springs, and connectors that enabled the transmission to down shift when the gas pedal was pushed to the floor. Over the twentyone years of this trucks life, the system had become loose and very sloppy.

I ordered a kickdown cable, throttle cable, and mounting hardware from Summit Racing. According to Summit, there is a difference between transmissions so I had to verify that I had the 727TF tranny. The cable kits are made by Lokar and come with everything you need.

I started with the kickdown cable installation. The Loakar instructions were written to walk you through the process but they were lacking pictures of the parts they were talking about so I had to guess what parts they refered to. I bolted the transmission side of the cable to the transmission and ran the cable up to the carbeurator. The next step ended up taking an hour due to the fact there were no helpful pictures or diagrams. I had read the instructions for the new Holley carb and purchased and installed a kickdown lever bracket. I ended up taking it off my carb and not using it. I played around with the cable, and some ball-n-socket connectors until I had the new kickdown lever attached to the throttle linkage in the only way I could imagine.

Next I removed the old throttle cable and ran the new one from the gas pedal to the throttle linkage. The directions for the throttle cable were much better than the kickdown cable, they had quality diagrams that were easy to follow.
The throttle cable took me about fifteen minutes to install. I ordered a three foot cable just in case I made a mistake and cut the cable to short. It came out right the first cut. With both cables installed, it was now a matter of adjusting them. The kickdown cable had to be adjusted so that the transmission would only kick down when the pedal hit the floor. The throttle cable had to be set where it would return to idle position when released.

The entire project took about 2 hours. I could have made the stock parts work by bending the old kickdown lever and tweeking some brackets, but I wanted it all to work exceptionally well and look somewhat factory. It turned out working like a swiss watch.

Throttle cable installed but not yet cut to fit.

Mounting bracket and throttle return spring kit.