Starter rope

The puller rope on my starter assembly is damaged.  It was damaged when I bought the starter assembly off eBay, and until now it hasn't been a problem for me to think about, but as the engine slowly comes back together, I need to get it working again.
Stripping the spring return assembly is all pretty straight forward, but it clearly is something that hadn't been done for a while - it was full of a thick cake of mud, dirt and oil, severely restricting the free movement of the engagement plates.

I had originally intended to simply replace the original and damaged wire pull rope with a modern nylon rope designed for lawn mower engines, however it turns out that a lawn mower pull rope is too thick to fit comfortably around the assembly, and so I had to go in search of a replacement flexible wire rope.

There are many specifications for wire rope, and not all wire rope is suitable for such regular wrapping and unwrapping around a tight diameter like the Manurhin starter device.  And so it was with little confidence that I went to see a local wire rope supplier.  But how wrong could I be?

Rope Services Direct Ltd were fantastic.  Mike was not only interested in my problem, but had exactly the wire rope i needed (2.5mm dia. Multi-strand, stainless steel) and hundreds of other types of wire besides.  He also threw in a handful of appropriate end terminals for me - all for the price of a beer!
Incidentally; Rope Services Direct Ltd can also create bowden cables to any design and end fitting, so they may well be very useful a little further down the line when it comes to break and throttle cables too