Funnel

 This weekend I bodged round a problem on my sports car. The control for the cabin heater had got very stiff. Lubrication and cleaning fixed this quite easily, but the forces I'd used to turn the heat on and off had bent and dislodged part of the heater. Frankly I'm amazed that it doesn't leak.

 I leave this piece of information here just so that humanity doesn't forget it. I got this tip from a Haynes manual for a Kawasaki Z series motorbike (not the Z1000, I think that was in a different manual) and I haven't seen it anywhere else. The manual was probably from the late 80s or early 90s:

You can make a funnel out of Plasticine and use it to run oil through a Bowden cable if you hang it upright. After and hour or two the whole cable will be lubricated. If you use light oil and leave it overnight you can get a surprising amount of dirt and rust out of the cable. Don't do this is the cable has one of those plastic sleeves between the inner and the outer. I don't think Plasticine exists any more. Blutack doesn't work because it dissolves in the oil. I used automotive detailing clay.

Richard "Or buy a new cable" B