Shift Cables for a Dummy with a Chevrolet

Chevrolet shift cable

When it comes to doing their own car maintenance, most people are pretty much stymied by anything more complex than an oil change (and plenty wouldn't even try that task). Still, if you have anything beyond rudimentary mechanical skills and can figure out what's broken on your car, it's not a bad idea to google the fix in hopes that it's a simple job. If you chose the wrong information, though, you may run into someone who knows even less than you pretending to be helpful – someone like Tammy Bronson, an eHow.com type whose post "How to Replace the Shift Cable in a Chevy" now lives at ItStillRuns.com

Bronson probably didn't draw on her MA for this post, since it's a fairly safe bet that no SUNY "literature and writing" curriculum includes auto shop. In fact, she clearly didn't draw on any training, since it's readily apparent that she had no idea what she was writing about. It didn't help that her content editor was equally clueless, not to mention sloppy enough to let verbiage like this pass:

"A sleeve houses the shift cable to keep it free of dirt and grim [sic]... Pressured [sic] is caused from overheating in the transmission."

Be that as it may, Tammy's research into shift cables turned out to be lacking. For instance, she claims that

"A broken shift cable isn't an expensive repair. The cable connects the gear shifter to the shifting arm of the engine."

Strange, we thought that the shift cable connected the gearshift to the transmission, not the engine. But what do we know? Tammy also thinks the only reason to replace a cable is that it's broken, because of "pressure." In reality, gear-heads know that the cables can stretch over time, and may need to be replaced even though intact. Bronson found some instructions somewhere, presumably in a YouTube video she didn't reference (none of the references in the original eHow post contain the instructions). We're pretty sure that anyone who's actually worked on cars wouldn't have instructed readers to "Twist the nut connecting the gear shift and the transmission. Use a socket wrench and remove the gear shift..."

...which, frankly, makes no sense. We were equally puzzled (and more than a little amused) by the notion that

"Both ends of the shifting cable attach to the shifting arm in different locations..."

...which – if correct – would mean that the cable is attached to the transmission at both ends, so what's the shift lever for? But we suspect that Tammy got crosswise with the instructions because she was confused by the fact that manual trannies have two cables, while automatic transmissions have one. Poor Tammy: she probably doesn't even know the difference...
The real story is that replacing a cable that is stretched or has broken is different depending on the make, model, and year of Chevrolet (not to mention transmission). We have no idea what instructions Bronson mangled for her half-answer, but we are almost certain she got them wrong. People like our Dumbass of the Day have no business whatsoever "answering" questions about car maintenance!

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