I had the exact opposite problem: the outer sheath rusted and got longer. This effectively made my cable shorter. I pulled the outer sheath out of the end, cut out a couple rings of the rusted expanded steel and made my cable effectively about 1/8" longer and solved my problem.

When I repaired my DHC recently I noticed it was a crazy additional force required to pull the door handle through the cable so I'm working on a no outer sheath solution (at least for the front doors).

I'm thinking of adding brass/bronze bushings to guide the inner cable then adjust the length perfectly to get it to work.

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2011 E70 • N55 (me)
2012 E70 • N63 (wife)