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.
Photos of the results at
http://photos.kibo.org.uk/cateye/
None of the work in progress, unfortunately.
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.
--
Hywel http://kibo.org.uk/
I like soldering, but I'm not very good at it.