How do I fix a sewer snake cable that has kinked inside the spooler cage?
I found a solution in time to get the rental unit back to the store this morning. This whole ordeal was painful, but I think if I can share it in a way that helps someone down the road I'll feel better about it. So this is what worked for me: I took a crowbar and, after examining the loop and twists inside the cage more carefully, found a place to pry part of the loop out of a side opening in the spooler cage. It definitely wasn't easy, but from that point on it suddenly got really easy to untwist it and work the cable back in and then out the way it was supposed to exit. 

Here's a similar machine like the one I used. From a websearch, I see some others out there that don't have the cage but a more or less solid spooler. My crowbar method probably wouldn't work on some of them.


When this type of cable kinks it creates an almost 90-degree bend in the inner core of the cable at the apex of the loop. This would not work very well as a drain cable anymore. So, when you finally get it untwisted the cable kinks themselves have to be straightened out. I used the method I mentioned in the question to straighten it out as I had the others. I clamped the cable in the bench vise just below the bend and then, using a lot of strength, forced the cable backward over the bend. I had to go beyond the straight mark so that it would spring back straight. I hope this answer helps anyone else that might find themselves in the same predicament.