Charlie's Shed - Speedometer Cable

For some bizarre reason the speedometer cable on the W/NG broke the other day. It's been there for a couple of thousand miles, but wasn't particularly well lubricated so perhaps that was the reason. I'd not considered repairing a speedo cable before, but there wasn't a replacement available commercially and I needed it for the VMCC run to Blakeney the following weekend, so I decided to attempt a repair.

The first attempt was to use the wonderous TIG set to weld a short length of 4 mm round bar to the end. I filed it square and it looked fine:

I made a little collar out of a bit of 8 mm aluminium round bar and used Araldite to hold it in place:

It lasted 27 miles before it broke in the same place.

Looking at the brand new cable in the Huntmaster, I found that the square drive end of the cable was made in aluminium and crimped to the cable end. I made up a similar fitting in the lathe:

Glued in place, with JB Weld this time, I fitted it to the bike.

I'd also bought a cheap Garmin GPS cycle speedometer, thinking that I'd need one if I ever used the Model A on a club run, which I certainly will do at some point. I'm currently testing the new cable against the Garmin, which reveals that the Chronometric on the W/NG reads about 5% high.