hacker-pschorr

How common is this?

I cannot say I've seen many / any threads on this.

Other than age, any known culprits that cause this to happen?

blown 87

Mine broke if that means any thing.

SeanR

Went to replace one we thought was busted and it ended up being the ball cup had rusted to the lever on the trans.

Sucked because I now have an extra 3 speed cable.

CJ8 2 928

I thought I broke mine but after about 6 hours I fixed it. It came apart at the shift arm. I could do it in 1 hour now.

hacker-pschorr

Should have mentioned this in the OP - this is Todd's read car (see my sig) and he's looking at options to improve on the design.
That is unless this is such a rare occurrence, no reason to bother.

Landseer

The lower boot decays and sand and grit can get into the metal sleeve and jam it. That happened on one of the rescue cars. Cable not salvageable.

One other note, the S4 4spd cable is slightly longer than the earlier 4 spd cables, by just a tad, because the S4 TC is a bit bigger diameter.

Bill Ball

Look underneath the car for an 18" long drilling rig pipe. When I hit one in the road it smashed my shifter cable.

Don Ashe

Mine was due to cracking on the lower bellows. Once road grit and moisture get in there, it will eventually fail. Has I noticed it and replaced the bellows and relubed the cable, it would have lasted longer.
OTOH, it did last 26 years, so I won't need another until 2036...

-don

Tony

Ive been shifting mine "manually" since...i dont know when....never an issue! -touch wood-