MB E430 Broken accelerator cable while driving





Who has similar experience with any car?


duplicate post, see


I was driving over the Grapevine in a 1998 Plymouth Voyager, with four of my children in the car, trying to get to a wedding in Simi Valley. I was in the fast lane when all of a sudden my car lost power…there was no response when I put my foot on the accelerator. In what I considered a total miracle, I was able to turn my wheel and coast across three lanes of oncoming traffic (this was on a Friday around 5 0’clock) without getting hit, and pulled onto the shoulder. I called for a tow, and, long story short, a repairman at the place I was towed to who was just about to go home saw my tearful face and squirmy children and agreed to look at the car. It was a broken accelerator cable, which he fixed in about 20 minutes using a ziptie. I was able to continue on my way, and, I’m embarrassed to admit, I never had the ziptie replaced…it just did the job until a drunk driver totalled my van about two years after that.


Forty thousand miles is a bit young for a cable failure but there may be a few things that could contribute to it.
The most obvious thing I could see would be if the cable might have been very slightly kinked a bit (either during the manufacture of the car, during a service or repair, etc) and finished off by a lot of stop and go driving.
Usually if a cable is going to fail it gives a bit of advance notice because the pedal may have a very slight roughness to it.

That’s just a wild guess but I would think a careful examination of the old cable would provide a clue as to what caused it to break.