dazza85 wrote:I believe that Richard is correct as all our thermocouples at work have the spare cable coiled up and when I asked one of our calibration techs about it he said that all the thermocouples come already calibrated and any damage to the cable results in the thermo getting tossed out.

Dude, grab as many of those discarded thermocouples as you can. They're worth between $50-$100 each.
There is no "calibration" in the cables, it's just the cold-temperature junctions mentioned earlier in this thread. Repairing the cable with the right connectors keeps cold temp junctions at bay.
That's why VDO tell you not to shorten the cable, because they know you'll be using the wrong connectors and creating extra junctions.