Wednesday 13 June 2012

How to...run wires through bars

You grab a fresh set of nice looking bars with no holes for wires and you think to yourself..." These would look better with wires running on the inside instead of the outside..."

Start step drilling the bars where the wires are gonna go in. Make sure you mask everything.The swarf  will scratch the paint when rubbed against the cloth.



Run a spherical burr around the inside of the hole to enlarge it and remove all of the edges that might catch and cut the sleeve and wires.



Step drill the holes at the bottom of the bars where both lines are going to come out and  through the top yoke. Run the burr and make sure the wholes are big enough to run both cables. The bigger the hole, the easier stuff will go through. Remember, you read it first here.

Run enough MIG wire through both holes to guide the cable


Spray some WD40, vaseline, olive oil, lard, used engine oil, cod liver oil, gay gel, or whatever you've got handy into the holes to make the stuff slide in better.



This sums up 3 or 4 hours of work , including the boring task of lengthening the wires if you're changing from short to longer bars. 
Anyway, to cheer me up I always remember the sayings on a " Exile-hide-your-softail-coil-under-the-engine-kit-for-a-thousand-British-pounds-or-so" instruction leaflet:
"Now enjoy the clean look of your engine" Laaaaaaavelly...

2 comments:

  1. Nice stuff chaps. I've just done the same thing on the 550. The clean look is well worth the effort!

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  2. I agree, there's nothing like clean bars, I just prefer them with no controls at all.
    I've got a CB500T and it's the only stock bike I've ever seen with cables running inside the bars.

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