Can anyone recommend how and what I should use to relube the clutch cable after I had the car engine steam cleaned?

 

Are there any other engine components that will need to be relubed after an engine steam cleaning?

Don't bother - the cable is only $18 or so from the dealer, and only takes 1/2 hour to change. Most likely, the cable is starting to wear out, and fray on the pedal end where it makes a sharp bend into the engine compartment. If allowed to continue, the cable will snap sometime when you push it in. The lubricant used in the cable is a dry wax-like lubricant, and I doubt anything else will work properly. If the washing of the engine compartment made it worse, than I would hazzard a guess that the cable's outer covering has already broken either at the firewall where it makes that sharp bend, or the cable was improperly run over the steering shaft instead of under it wearing a hole in the rubber cover and allowing water and stuff into the cable. Normally a washing of the engine compartment would have no effect on a good cable, thus it should be replaced. Re-lubing isn't really possible, or worth the effort for a cheap part like that.

 

GD

GD, that's interesting. Subaru dealers must be getting more competitive on their parts prices these days. Usually, I can get parts for about 50% to 75% of the dealer cost at either thepartsbin.com or autopartsgiant.com. When I just checked (out of curiosity) for price of clutch cable (for 4wd) at autopartsgiant.com, they want $20.37. Normally, that would translate into the dealer wanting as much as $40. And you say the price is around $18. I hope things have improved that much. That would be great. I'll probably need to replace our clutch cable soon, so the information you provided is very helpful. Thanks, Rick

General Disorder, thanks for the info. It seems that if the steam cleaning created the problem, meaning before the steam cleaing the car shifted fine, then somewhere along the way some waxing is still better short term until I have the cable changed.

 

I welcome the knowledge of the do it yourselfer, but I'd rather pay someone to change it. The catch 22 seems to be I'll be paying more to someone who knows less and will take longer to do it wronger.