Fuel door release cable

Tiny
MSMITH
  • MEMBER
  • HONDA CIVIC
2003 Honda Civic EX 4dr 4 cyl 57000 miles. Recently the cable to the fuel door broke. Our local Honda Dealer has the part and explained that it took removing the interior trim and some trunk trim to access the cable and install a new one. Is this true and if so, how difficult would it be to do it myself? Are there any publications that can give me a diagram or detailed instructions on teh process?
Monday, May 21st, 2007 AT 12:19 PM

4 Replies

Tiny
BRUCE HUNT
  • MECHANIC
  • 3,754 POSTS
I am sure there are some but they might never cover in detail what you need to do. Follow the old cable and take of or out the obvious obstructions. As a note, the car was assembled from the ground up and you are trying to reverse the process, but it may be that you do not necessarily lay the new cable in exactly as they have.
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Friday, May 25th, 2007 AT 8:35 AM
Tiny
CLIF
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I'm having the same problem with the fuel door cable. It looks like this is a fairly common problem. I gather from reading other forums that the new cable is about $55 and shop labor is about 3 hours.

Here's another option I found. Repair part is under $25, there's a video that shows how to install it, and I think it won't take 15-20 minutes to do the fix. Web site is www. Fueldoorfix. Com
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Sunday, May 27th, 2007 AT 9:54 PM
Tiny
MSMITH
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I bought the part at our local Honda Dealership, was able to purchase for about 50 bucks. I had taken the interior trim off of the drivers side and unfortunatley, you have to take it all off, not just some. Snaked the new cable along the same route as the broken one, which by the way, the only hard part about snaking the new cable is getting from the trunk to past the backseat, the rest is cake. Took out the old cable and put the new one in it's place.

After I got it all hooked back up, I had a little trouble with the distance of travel between the resting position of the relase handle and the point that it released the fuel door and the trunk would not open at all. I finally figured out that the trunk lock was engaged and only had to unlock it and it worked perfectly. Be sure that you put the plastic peices on the cable in the middle slot on both the release lever assembly and the trunk assembly. (The cable is fuel and trunk in one)

I would recommend to anyone with this problem to do it yourself, once you get the trim off, and be careful to pull out from the body and not up or you'll break the plastic pins, you'll be glad you didn't spend 200+ bucks on the labor for it.

Please send my any questions you might have about this, i'll be glad to answer them as best I can.
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Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 AT 12:05 PM
Tiny
BRUCE HUNT
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Great job. I like to see people with success stories and willing to take the effort to save and keep the dealerships from making a killing on the labor. Pat yourself on the back.
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Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 AT 12:51 PM

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