I'm somewhat of a noob here, so pardon my post if it's off base, but something isn't adding up.
I placed a large order with LMC for quite a few "bits and pieces" totaling around $300 for my truck about a week ago. The box showed up quickly, the order was correct, and everything looked to be of decent quality.
One of the items I ordered was a complete parking brake cable set up for my truck ('70 Long-Box, 1/2 ton, with coil springs). You have to be careful when you order these items from LMC's website as they have many different options based what truck you have (long/shortbox, 2WD or 4X4, 1/2T or 3/4T, etc) With of all of these options I figured it would be good because all of the cables would be an exact fit since things are so specific.
This weekend I began installing the cables, and right away there was a problem. The cables looked good, but the rear cables do not fit into the rear brake backing plates correctly. The cable end has "barbs" on it that are supposed to hold it into the hole in the backing plate, but the 1/2" cable end doesn't even come close to "snapping" into the 11/16" hole in the backing plate. Not only are the cables way to narrow, but the way the barbs are set up on these cables, the backing plate would have to be almost 1/4" thick for the cables to actually hold tight inside the holes.
I thought maybe I messed up something when I ordered these rear cables, so I double checked the part number tonight on LMC's website:
34-3836 Rear Cable (w/coil springs) 1/2T 67-72 $19.95
Yep, that is the cable I ordered, and according to the bag they were in, that is the cable they shipped me. Really?? I can't believe they would think it's OK to have a 1/2" cable end bobbling around in an 11/16" hole in the backing plate.
Here is a crappy photo of me test fitting the cable into the backing plate. You can see the daylight between the two.
Does anyone here have any experience with these LMC rear-cables? I'm trying to decide if I should ship these back and order them from online-tube, (are those any better?) or if I should just weld up the holes in the backing plate and redrill them to the 1/2" size. Is it possible that the holes in my backing plates are somehow worn bigger than original, or is LMC just really that far out of touch on these things? So far I've really been happy with some of the stuff I've gotten from LMC, but not these cables!