SR500 clutch cable sizes and standards

Recently my SR500 needed a new clutch cable:

So as this bike was a stock Japan Spec 1986 model I thought it would be straightforward to order a new part. I went to Yamaha (first mistake) and they confidently identified it and sourced a part for me from a local dealer with old stock.

It arrived and was too long. So I measured it and measured the old one from end to end of the sheath (which is what actually matters). I won't actually give that measurement and you'll see why soon. Below is the cable I had on the bike from purchase (used, and a Japanese import).

(Fig 1)

My measurement proved sort of worthless because nobody (and I mean nobody) knows the lengths of the cables they sell; they only talk in short, standard or long. 

You are fucking kidding me right?

So which cable do I have as my starting cable which was perfect then the Yamaha one was clearly too long ... Hmmm ... its fucking irritating when people in engineering and technical roles speak in qualitative language not quantitative language. You know, like "how many do you want" ... a few. Gives them five ... ahh, no mate I'll need a lot more than that.

Knowing nothing I had to make some assumptions ... what sizes did I now have? So I took a punt and ordered the short from someone else.

So now with two new cables I know that Yamaha supplied me the "long" and someone else supplied the short and my original cable was the fucking standard cable.

FUCK ME DEAD

So you can see from te above tape measure that there is about 100mm between each of them. Giving us

•  +100
• standard
• -100

This means that if (refer to Fig 1 above) we measure from the end of the plain steel cap to the end of the black end (that fits into the engine) the entire length is 960mm. You can now use that as a reference number for determining what you have because that's apparently "standard".

So now you know.