Sunday, April 29, 2012

Internally Wiring the Bars Pt.1-Six the Hard Way

Ok so now that the holes are drilled out I thought to myself, "Oh man I got this now!"....How wrong I was.  I mean I knew it was going to be tricky, but little did I know I would end up cursing like a sailor, needing to solder some connectors and learning some very critical information the hard way.

So first I took some thread and tied a nut to the end of the string to put the nut in one one and jiggle it out the other, however, turns out that the nut was too big and I instead decided to use a small screw


















Once I dropped the thread with a nut from one hole to the other, then I tied the end of the string to a low E guitar string and pulled the guitar string through the  bars


















That proved to be somewhat ok.  I also bought some rubber grommets to put around the holes I drilled that way I would not have to file them down, and they did indeed fit perfect


















I pulled both strings through


















Then I took the 6 wires from the hand controls, tied an overhand knot around them and taped up the whole thing with electrical tape so it would not come apart while viciously pull them through the bars


















Here it is all bundled up


















This is where things start to go a bit amiss.  So after trying multiple times to pull the bundle of 6 wires through the bars, I finally get them through (one of the times I realize that the black plastic sleeve bunched up at the 90 degree bend rendering the try useless and having to start all over again, only after cutting off most of the wrap).  However, when I do finally get them to the bottom hole, I realize that the bundle of connectors are too wide to fit through the hole.  I tried vigorously to try and get them out seeing as how I just victoriously pulled them through, but to no avail.  I was pulling out single connectors one at a time.  As you can see here, I got about the 3 of the wires out when tragedy struck...


















I broke off one of the Deutsch connectors!  Not a happy moment.  It was about here that I was so pissed off that I stopped taking pictures.  At this point I dropped everything and rode over to Radio Shack where i had to pic up a solder kit (the old one I had was not heating up).  So then I came back and although the night was getting late, I was determined to fix my wrong.  I immediately heated up the solder gun and got to it.  Soon enough, the connector was back on.....oh wait, did I mention that because i could not get all the wires through that I had to pull them all BACK OUT!!!!!!  Well, I did and I was not happy about it.  So anyhow, after I got the connector back on I had a great idea: Instead of pulling out all 6 wires at once, I would break it up and do 3 and 3.  More time consuming but it might work.

And in fact it did!  I had to first put the wires through the grommet so it would be on the back end.  But none the less, I got all the wires through!!!


















Here they are all out!


















Then I took the extra black sleeve that I cut off and slid it back over the wires and up into the bars.  Slip the wires through a grommet on the bottom, placed grommet around the hole and there it is!  One side of the bars internally wired and some good lessons learned.  Ones that would help make the other side a bit of a breeze...although I had the throttle to deal with.  Either way!  I was stoked, I had some success, and promptly tapped out for the evening.

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