How-To Adjust your Throttle Value cable.

[Don87LX]

The Throttle Value cable (TV cable from here on) is highly important to your automatic transaxle. It tells your transaxle where your throttle is and if it is out of adjustment can cause the transaxle to shift early or late, enguage roughly, or cause the torque converter to let up at highway speeds. Thankfully adjustment of the TV cable is fairly straight forward. Before you begin, your throttle cable should be adjusted so there is little or no slack in the end. Also check the TV cable for play by grasping the cable between the adjuster and the throttle arm on the transaxle. The TV cable adjuster is located on the front of the transaxle, sort of behind/under the battery. If you look next to the battery and push the lower raditor hose toward the engine, you should see the TV cable bracket and adjuster. If you can move the cable back and forth without moving the throttle arm on the transaxle you have play in the TV cable, you need to adjust it to match your throttle cable.

Tools needed:
10mm Socket and wrench.
12mm Wrench.
Pliers.
Beer or Cigar (for victory dance)

1. Remove the battery.

2. Remove the plastic tray your battery sat on. Be careful as this may have battery acid on it.

3. Remove the metal tray that the battery rests on. There are several (~4) 10mm bolts holding it to the car. (PSST..If you've been considering relocating the battery, this is a great excuse)

4. You should now have a clear view of the TV cable. It looks very much like the adjuster on the throttle cable (from the gas pedal to the carb/throttle body.)

5. Now that you have easy access to the TV cable bracket, loosen the retaining nut (12mm) on the cable that is against the bottom of the TV cable bracket.

6. Once that nut is backed far enough down the cable, lift the adjuster nut out of the bracket by pulling up on the TV cable. DO NOT yank. If should lift out easily. Yanking on the TV cable can damage the throttle arm on the transaxle. Bad mojo.

7. Now, Move the adjuster nut down the threads on the end of the TV cable until when the cable is in the bracket there is little or no deflection in the TV cable.

8. For carberated engines, adjust the TV cable so that it moves the lever on the transmission at the exact same time that the throttle cable moves and revs up the car. For Fuel injection, adjust the TV cable so it moves right before the throttle cable changes teh revs.

9. Tighten the retaining nut back to the bottom of the bracket after properly seating the adjuster nut in the top of the bracket.

10. Reinstall the barrery trays and battery itself in the reverse order of how you removed them.

Road test the car. If you did it correctly, you should notice a nicer shift pattern, no drop out, WOT shifts are closer to redline. and the transaxle should do a better job of staying in the car's peak torque band.

--Donnie

[Lester Lugnut]

Good post Don - should be of benefit to alot of board members here. I had this problem after a local tranny shop did shop majpr work a few years ago. Seems they didn't really understand the TV.

[A20A1]

I was toying with a few Cockpit trans cable adjustment ideas...
Basiacaly you just buy a choke cable and mounting plates... run the cable end to the trans linkage and the other to the inside of the car... in easy reach of the driver. Now you can pull the cable out to get high RPM shifts constantly or you can leave some slack in the cable and go for the Daily driver lower RPM shifting... You have to add a cable stop so you don't pull the cable too far. and another cable stop to keep the cable fro getting too much slack.

I also ripped my dash out at the same time and moved my guage cluster to the center... way easier to videotape the guages whe the camera doesn't have to peer thru the steering wheel or over my shoulder.

[accordlx]

I moved this post to the "How To" section.

Thank you Donnie for this much needed "How To". Keep up the great work.

Chris

[Einstein]

After removing the battery holder, you can also get to the coolant overflow tank very easily. Disconnect it and clean it out! You might find tons of lard in the bottom like I did... :p

[A20A1]

Originally posted by Einstein
After removing the battery holder, you can also get to the coolant overflow tank very easily. Disconnect it and clean it out! You might find tons of lard in the bottom like I did... :p

My lard was all green and spongy.

[CARBurn]

Originally posted by Einstein
After removing the battery holder, you can also get to the coolant overflow tank very easily. Disconnect it and clean it out! You might find tons of lard in the bottom like I did... :p

Mine was brown and rusty. Yummy

The haynes manual makes it sound easy to remove the reservoir without removing the battery holder. They don't even mention removing the battery holder

[Einstein]

Originally posted by A20A1



My lard was all green and spongy.

Yeah, mine was like that stuff they chop up and put in Chinese hot-n-sour soup!

[A20A1]

mmmmm... soooooup :p

[2ndTimeHondaOwner]

After removing the battery holder, you can also get to the coolant overflow tank very easily. Disconnect it and clean it out! You might find tons of lard in the bottom like I did... :p

I know it's an old post but thanks for this info. I wouldn't have thought to do this and had lots of stuff (mud) in mine.