Keep Bending Heater Cable - Need Routing

[Hardway]

Good news!  I picked up the piano wire from Grainger on Thursday.  Sure enough, it was the right size at 1.295mm.  It said so on the box and using my digital calipers measures out at 1.295 to 1.300 so all is good.  I pointed this out to the guy behind the counter that they need to review and correct their website.  I also picked up 6ft of 1.5mm ID bike cable housing from a local bike shop.  It is really nice stuff and is Teflon coated on the inside.  It took me a few minutes to fab up a new cable and then literally a few hours to get everything together and back in to the car.  After much thought I installed the long cable for the fresh air door on the top right connection point.  This seems correct as Namerow illustrated in his picture. When you move the top Air selector to the right towards "Vent" it opens the fresh air door.  As you continue sliding it to the right it opens the door in the heater box to allow heat in.  It is supposed to be colder this weekend so I plan on testing it one night to see if this all truly works.  Really hard to get motivated to test a heating system when it is in the low 80's here. 

My only regret was not paying attention to the direction of the arc of the wire when I was making my 90 degree bends for the lever connection.  The lever is still pretty hard to move but it does move the door as intended.  I think if I had done it the other way the wire would not be so stressed.  I am getting good at taking this apart so when I have a free weekend I may tackle it.  For now, I am just glad to have everything buttoned back up.  Thank you again to everyone for all of your information, help, and guidance.

[Namerow]

9 hours ago, Hardway said:

My only regret was not paying attention to the direction of the arc of the wire when I was making my 90 degree bends for the lever connection.  The lever is still pretty hard to move but it does move the door as intended.  I think if I had done it the other way the wire would not be so stressed.

You make a good point about getting the 'curl' of the wire correct for each of the four functions.  I can see why you've ended up with stiff action.

Go back and take a look at the 'floor' photo of my finished levers-and-cables assembly.  I curled the new wires so that they matched the shape of originals as they came out of the car (notice that one of the wires actually has a double curvature).  To put a curl in the (tempered) wire, clamp a piece of 1"-dia pipe or dowel vertically in your bench vise and then pull the wire back and forth across the round surface with a bit of 'pull'.  You'll need to grip each end of the wire with vise-grips so that it doesn't twist in your hands as you're doing the forming.  It doesn't take much, so be careful not to over do it (takes a bit of practice --- but you've now got lots of wire to play around with!).  Put the curl in the wire first.  When you're happy with that, you can now form the 'step' at the end that goes into the control lever hole (as you point out, this requires paying attention to the alignment).  As the final step, cut the wire to approx. length at the other (straight) end.  Cut it a bit long, just in case.  Same goes for your sheathing.