Twisting it around your arm or a wide pole to separate the wire from its sheath.Still, in a real pinch, a cable that has recently stuck can, most times, be salvaged by: The best thing to do is use a purpose-made cable lube attachment, available at your local powersports store. The three main causes of cable woes are wrong routing – it's too short after changing handlebars or crashing and, most often, not properly maintained. This doesn’t allow the clutch to release all the way and causes it to slip. What really happens is that it moves less and less inside the sheath and eventually the cable and sheath as a whole start to fuse into one nasty mass that overpowers the return spring. The clutch cable is far sneakier and creeps into your perception as perceived clutch slippage. It’s also a wise idea to get in the habit of checking now and again to see that your throttle isn’t affected when you turn the handlebars completely from side to side. Never ride such a bike-they call that a “suicide throttle” for a reason. The throttle cable normally lets you know it’s going bad by refusing to snap back the throttle grip when it is turned and released. Up until very recently, most bikes have had at least two cables that can go bad and cause headaches: the throttle, and clutch cables. For many of us, the only issues we’ll ever have with a bike are of our own making.
