WIRING A HUB DYNAMO FOR EASY WHEEL DIS- & RE-MOUNTING IN THE DARK
The slides connecting my BUMM lamps to the SON hub dynamo have been pulled off and slid back on only a dozen times but are in a sorry state, the cheap shrink-wrap covers torn, the metal mangled so that I doubt they can be bent around the wire one more time, because I can't bend that far and have to do the business by touch. The whole design of a single piece of wire between the hub dynamo and the lamp is stupid, stupid, stupid: unless you commit the aesthetic solecism of wrapping the wire around and around a fork leg you have to fix the wire somewhere with zip tie. Add to this that no motor factor, hardware store or electrical store that I've telephoned stocks the slides BUMM and SON in their unique and lonely wisdom fit, and this p!sswilly wire and its wretched slides can immobilise your bike as soon as it gets dark -- while the pubs are still open!
Here's a trial run of how to make a better setup, at a cost of few grammes, to be refined and made less visible when new slides come from Germany, and a wall wart male to female extension power cord comes from China.
I'll cut the power cord in two, the short male part to have slides attached to fit the SON:
Here, from overlayers of shrink tube I've made a little plug that holds the two slides in position, in case I ever again want to remove them. I'll make the final item smaller and less visible when the components arrive. The slides will be fitted to the bare ends of the male part after the power cord is cut in two. The intention is that they will stay on the SON when the wheel is removed and that unplugging will be done on the inside of the fork a few inches away, where one can what see what one is doing.
A working mockup of what I intend, made with the parts I could find at a motor factor. In the final version there will be only one tidy plug and socket. The top half will be the female socket of the power extension cord, cut long enough to reach the lamp. It will be made watertight by a hood extending about a centimetre over its forward edge and over the male plug, made from a few layers of shrink tube.
