Kibo …

Following on from nobody’s thread (http://tinyurl.com/49677) about replacing the CatEye charger with one that will trickle charge the battery when it’s max’ing out, I’ve replaced the spiral cabling with flat cable, tied to the frame.

All I did was take the battery box apart, slide the spade connectors off the terminal and remove the battery-lamp cable entirely, in-line fuse connector included.

I then soldered some cable to new spades (HF11M), split the live line to take another in-line fuse connector, then soldered a new 2.1mm plug to the other end. There’s only about an inch of cable coming out of the battery box now, the rest of the cable being permanently attached to the bike.

To connect the fixed cable to battery I used a 2.1mm inline socket (Maplin code JK11M), then an L-shaped DC connector (AQ88V I think) at the other end into the switch unit. I now see why CatEye uses a straight one for this.

To plug the hole in the battery box I got a rubber 7/8″ hole plug thingy and cut a slit through which the cable is pushed.

I used two core electrical cabling that I harvested from an old video power lead. I tidied the solder points a bit using heat-shrink tubing, also from Maplin - a variety of sizes is available. The external parts of the connections have been wrapped in electrical tape to try to keep the water out.

I’ve done this because I hate the spiral cable that comes with the lamps as it’s such a PITA to get it wrapped around the frame. As I store the bike outside I need to take it off after each ride to recharge it. Now it’s an easy job.

Haven’t tried them “in the field” yet, but, as the last photo shows, the lamps work, which is a bonus. If it all goes to ka-ka, I can replace what I’ve put in with the original CatEye bits within a couple of minutes.