The Snakes Alive CMP Wiring Project

[Jacques Reed]

Good Day,

With another year closing I thought it was time to finish off another loose end. I wanted to rewire the wire tails on the various lights on my F15-A. All of them had hard brittle insulation and the light base contacts on some were in poor shape.

Backtracking a bit: A year ago I had a local gasket manufacturing company make me some 15mm diameter fibre washers to replace the base contacts on those lights. Interestingly they did not stamp them out but used a high pressure water jet to cut them.

My originals had a small eyelet in the middle into which the wire was soldered. I note some light bases used a rivet on the wire end instead, but all mine had eyelets.

I obtained some brass eyelets online and installed them in the disks after drilling the holes for them. The material was too tough to use a punch and anyway I wanted to make the holes as accurately as possible on centre.

I made up a jig to hold the wire and base contact for soldering using a piece of wood. I drilled a 5/8" diameter 2mm deep recess with a wood spade bit then followed through on the drill press with a 4mm diameter hole. This made a nice firm fit to hold the wire and located the contact right in the center. I filed a groove in a soldering iron tip to make contact with the wire and rounded the back to contact the eyelet. Didn't show it here, but I used masking tape to hold it down in the jig during soldering.

With a couple practice runs it was a simple job to get a perfectly soldered contact. In fact, looking at my originals I am much closer on center than the originals in some cases. Two things to remember however: tin the wire end first and do not hold the soldering iron tip to the eyelet and wire for more than about 5-10 seconds. My first attempt heated the wire too much and made the plastic insulation swell which made it hard to remove from the jig and one to be scrapped.

Hope this is of some interest and a Merry Christmas to all.

Cheers,