About halfway through a long drive home last weekend, I suddenly felt the resistance from the accelerator pedal disappear. Anyone have any thoughts on what it could be?

I looked at a picture of the pedal cable linkage and it looks like there is a cable with two stops, one at the firewall (preventing the cable from being pulled through to decelerate below idle) and one at the end, against which a spring, spring stop, and spring collar sit. The spring collar clips into the top of the accelerator peddle.


On my truck, the grey spring collar is loose and does not clip into the pedal, so the pedal is free to pull up and down until hit sits against the spring.

Could the spring be broken, do I need a new throttle cable? Is the resistance spring in the throttle itself (on the engine) broken or weak?

 

I do believe the spring you are looking for is ON the throttle body. Check both sides, see what you find. I think it's spiral wound around the throttle shaft, on one side or the other.

 

Yep, the pedal is pushed back on by the spring on the throttle body.

 

So it would appear that the throttle return spring (on the side of the injection pump) is broken. The spring in this image:


It does not appear that I have the newer type of return spring from this image:


Any thoughts on where I should procure replacement springs?

 

Dealer would likely have them....... or at least, be able to get them. Parts stores as well, especially any place dealing primarily with diesels..... Might be able to go to TSC for that matter.

 

I can't for the life of me find that accelerator spring available online (the single spring style). I don't know if I should just use an outer spring from the later models (#2):


I ordered a generic "throttle return spring" assortment with 4x springs of varying sizes and tensions from Amazon. Hopefully I can make something work with these springs.

$50 for an OEM spring seems a bit ridiculous.

 

Can you find an entire upgrade kit for the dual spring? Might be the hot ticket.

 

I was unable to find a dual spring upgrade kit. The cost of the OEM spring (with plastic clips) being so high, I opted to (at least for now) buy a generic spring and bend it to fit the tabs. The issue there being that it had to be bent pretty tight to not slip off the tabs, and tight bends being prone to stress failure.

I will probably order the OEM clip and keep it in the truck for backup once I find a cheap enough source for it. Either that or I'll keep a generic replacement.

For now the problem seems to be resolved. Hurray! Now on to the next problem (slips out of 1st gear when cold and occasionally has trouble getting into 2nd (jerks around) and generally feels like it's slipping at low speeds, thinking fluid is way low).