So much joy from such a small repair!

[Globalti]

I was hooning down to the Ribble quite fast yesterday when my Cateye speedo stopped working. Did the usual roadside checks but couldn't wake it up, the display was good and strong but the pickup seemed to have stopped sensing the magnet. I've never seen a reed switch fail but a quick check back home with a multi-meter confirmed it wasn't closing the circuit when the wheel magnet passed.

All the Cateye wired pickups are the same simple design, just a tiny reed switch as found in security alarms encased in a plastic tube, which is clipped by two tabs into either a bolt and band-on fitting or a zip-tie and sticky patch fitting. I've accumulated a collection of Cateye bits over the years so it was a simple but fiddly job to remove a spare pickup from a bolt-on mount, spread open the zip-tie mount and remove the failed pickup, clip in the replacement and refit to the fork leg with a sticky pad and two zip-ties, then cut through both little cables, staggering the cuts and twisting the cable ends together then soldering, insulating the two joins with a tiny bit of vinyl tape then slipping up the tube of heat-shrink that I had managed to remember to fit over the cable before joining the ends. A quick careful wave of the gas blowlamp and the heat-shrink closed in tight on the repair, which works fine.

So in half an hour of enjoyable fettling I saved myself the hassle and cost of a replacement Cateye pickup and made use of something from my box of spares. A job as small as this gives me as much pleasure as re-laying a sunken patio slab, cleaning out the gutters or any other household repair or maintenance job. My philosophy is that since everything was once assembled in a factory, most things can be pulled apart and repaired without throwing them away and buying new. My most difficult was replacing the tiny battery in an iPod Nano but that's a job I will never attempt again as it was so fiddly and microscopic.

 

[Yellow Saddle]

Yeah, these jobs are becoming very small and I often pass over some of them. However, I've soldered zillions of reed switches in my time. I can't stand those wires so my forks all have little holes in the crown and out just above the drop-out. The reed switch gets cut off, the wire fed through the hole, trimmed to the right length and then soldered on again. I just can't stand the taping and tie-in and looping of excess wire.

 

[Globalti]

I don't mind twisting the wire neatly round the front brake cable, it looks fine if you take care to lay it "flat" all the way.

Have you ever dismantled a security alarm contact and used the reed switch from that?

 

[Gixxerman]

Yes these liitle fixes are a bit like wetting youself in a dark suit - you get a warm feeling but no one else notices.
But chapeau for you is mending something and giving it an extended life in this increasingly throwaway society.
It is a shame that spares for most consumer electronics are so expensive compared to a replacement item, that in most cases it makes the repair uneconomical and the whole lot just ends up as landfill. That is one reason that I like Bosch stuff, as there is hardly any part, regardless of how small it is, that you cannot get for a reasonable cost.