Plastic Nipples...

Way back in the '70's, Honda used these horrible plastic sleeves around their cable nipples to reduce friction as the nipple turned in the control levers. All well and good, I hear you say and it is so.

The sleeve slips around the nipple, and the nipple swivels nicely in your clutch lever without you developing that gorilla grip. All fine, unless you repeat the application on the other end of the cable in a claw arrangement like this:

Alright, I know someone has mangled it but it wasn't much better when it was new. Guess what that claw does to those nice plastic sleeves? Mangles them as well!

Here's my solution. The nipple is 6 mm OD x 10 mm long, and the sleeve is 8 mm OD. I've used the mini-lathe to turn these brass sleeves to fit, and added a little notch with a needle file to accommodate the cable:

Here's how they fit. This is just a test at the handlebar end - the plastic sleeve will be staying here.

Here's the engine end - the two halves are fixed with a high-viscosity cyanoacrylate:

Sitting neatly in the claw. I'll have to remove the clutch cover to straighten that out:

There's a lot more on cables and cable making here

Change of subject - a bit of painting. The chrome on this coolant pipe was past it's best and missing in a few places, so it has had a coat of UPol wheel silver:

As you might have gathered, I am aiming to get this bike roadworthy as a winter hack at minimal cost.

This is not how you fit O rings...