Honda Odyssey 2007. Passenger side middle row captains seat is folded down with extensive play in the lever. Opened it up, and a clip on the cable is broken. Honda says they do not sell just the cable, pony up 450 for the whole assembly. Is this possibly correct? Any ideas on how to jury rig a repair? Any place I might be able to get a replacement cable?
yes, making the subassembly the “service part” is quite common. Usually it’s because it’s the same way they buy the production part from their supplier, as part of a subassembly.
If you need just the cable, look for a recycler like LKQ or hit up the scrapyards.
That’s exactly what ‘auto recyclers’ are for. If your local junk yard doesn’t have one they can probably find someone who does.
Yes that does make sense. Will check for a junked one.
Voice of experience here… Your broken cable may be a common failure, and when you go to the scrap yards, you’ll either find the part has already been scavenged from all of the available cars, or if you do find one, it will break two months later. Back when I had an old Subaru, I’d grab all of the plastic bits that hold the driver’s door latch and lock mechanism together that I could find as they’d die simply for being old plastic.
But around ten bucks (guessing) for a junkyard part vs $450 for a new unit is probably a worthy gamble.
Alternately, if it is a commonly failed part, the aftermarket world may have a better replacement. or people have figured a workaround. Seems to be the case here:
You need to get together with the Doper with the locked-up seat belt. 
Apparently it is a very common problem.
We tried Liquid Weld. It held for about three cycles, then broke. There is a lot of torque the plastic is exposed to.
Am going to pick up an entire seat this afternoon. I will either use it as a direct replacement, or, (since my wife is loathe to drive a car made up of zombie parts) I will use it as a donor for the cable.
Cost me $150, which seemed quite reasonable for a leather seat. And because I thought it was fair, I did not try to dicker the price down, which I bet I could have done.
I don’t know how it works where you are, but in my experience, if you beat these guys down, when you arrive to collect it, someone will jerk a thumb in the general direction of the car to which it is still firmly attached and tell you to help yourself. Pay the full price and there is a fair chance that the seat would be out and ready to take away.
There are pro’s and con’s to this. If you take it out yourself, you do at least have the opportunity to scavenge some other useful parts.
When I showed up it was sitting on a pallet, and wrapped in heavy plastic. It is the dark grey, rather than the light grey of our seats, but I am sure the working cable with fit just right.
When I showed up it was sitting on a pallet, and wrapped in heavy plastic. It is the dark grey, rather than the light grey of our seats, but I am sure the working cable with fit just right.