Heater control replacement

[BDD]

How are the cables from the fan and heater control unit removed and re-attached?
I need to replace mine and just need to find out how to do this.

Thanks,
BDD

[namba209]

If you are replacing the original plastic panel with another OE plastic panel, extreme care should be excersised or the replacement 30+ year panel will crack. If you have the new OGTS billet control panel, replacement of the cables is very straight forward, remove one cable at a time and its attaching hardware and reinstall it on the new billet panel, same for the other cable. I think it took me about 10-15 minutes to replace mine with the billet panel, but I have the whole assembly out of the car, which may have made it easier to do. HTH.

[BDD]

How are the cables attached to the "posts"? How do you detach and re-attach them? I haven't messed with mine because I am replacing one panel with another plastic one and don't want to beak anything.

[namba209]

On my 72 GT, the cables are held on to posts on the levers with a spring washer, the levers are held on to the control panel by a spring clip on the right side of the levers in the pic below. It appears that to change out the panel, the levers and cables come off the old panel and go back on the replacement panel, by removing the levers and cables together as an assembly. The lever knobs are held on with small common screwdriver set screws. Again, replacing a plastic panel with another plastic panel requires very subtle and gentle movements or it will break. Granted OGTS replacement panels are pricey, but you'll never have to replace it and they do look good. JMTCW.

[BDD]

Thank's for the feedback.
I can't unscrew the set screws in the car's heater panel control arm knobs, the heads are stripped and they are probably rusted in place. These set screws seem to easily get corroded as the bottom one is also corroded on my replacement panel. I could get the top handle off though. I figured out the spring clip that holds the arms on.
Because of all of this I probably can't use the control arms on the car (as mentioned above) and will have to use the arms already in the replacement panel.

What I might do is drill out the post that holds the cables onto the arms (unless you guys know of some other way to detach the cables) on both sets of arms. I will then attach the car's cables to the new control panel arms with a short machine screw with washers and a nylock nut. This will just have to be short enough to clear everything when the arms move.

This might be a good solution for anyone else in a similar predicament too.

I'll probably get the OGTS panel later after I save up for it. If nothing ese it would be far more durable than the originals.

BDD