So there I am at an intersection. I start to go and 2 things become apparent. The accelerator pedal feels suprisingly light and the engine isn't reving up as I might have expected. I pop the hood and have my friend hit the gas pedal but nothing happens, nothing moves. I pull the knee bolster and all I see it the pedal disconnected from the cable end. I find a rubber grommet on the end of the cable, but where is the retension clip? I cobble the thing back together, limp home and go to RealOEM web site. Evidently, BMW simply relies on the friction fit of the cable end thru the rubber grommet to keep things in place. Granted, it has worked since 1984, but wouldn't ya think there would some kind of clip retainer on the cable end.

Ya learn something new everyday......

alan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2009 04:54PM by alanrw.

Quote
alanrw
So there I am at an intersection. I start to go and 2 things become apparent. The accelerator pedal feels suprisingly light and the engine isn't reving up as I might have expected. I pop the hood and have my friend hit the gas pedal but nothing happens, nothing moves. I pull the knee bolster and all I see it the pedal disconnected from the cable end. I find a rubber grommet on the end of the cable, but where is the retension clip? I cobble the thing back together, limp home and go to RealOEM web site. Evidently, BMW simply relies on the friction fit of the cable end thru the rubber grommet to keep things in place. Granted, it has worked since 1984, but wouldn't ya think there would some kind of clip retainer on the cable end.

Ya learn something new everyday......

alan

this happened to me once when i was 90 minutes from my house, out in the middle of nowhere, at night, with no cell phone reception. I was driving down a backroad in Oklahoma and i just heard "pop" and no gas, flimsy gas pedal. I rolled into a pentacostal church of all places, where luckily, the pastor was at the time. Because it was dark out, it was impossible to see what was going on with the car, and given my sparse knowledge at the time, i probably didn't even know there was such a thing as an accelerator cable. graciously, he drove me about 30 minutes to the nearest walmart, where my friend from in town drove an hour to pick me up from. on the way i asked him about his religion, and learned that they don't watch TV or read any books other than the bible. the next day i drove my moms truck out there to meet the tow truck driver from AAA so he could follow me back to my house.

literally within five minutes of snooping around after dropping the car off at my house, i found the stupid rubber grommet on the floor and the end of the cable hanging there. i just popped it back in and proceeded to feel like a total doofus. how frustrating.

i had forgotten about this issue until i was in the middle of nowhere again, this time in arizona or new mexico, when pop, the cable slipped out again. i knew exactly what it was, and fixed it. five minutes later, it popped out again, so i put it back, and duct taped the crap out of it so it wouldn't move.

~the end~

I did see a package of various spring clips in the autoparts store in the section where they have the rotating trees of parts you need. Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to slip on a thin washer followed by the clip and put an end to this.

alan

yeah. i have since owned two e30s so I am not sure of the condition of my current one, but now i know what to do if it breaks.