Hacks / Bodges

The heels on my road shoes have worn down and give no grip meaning I slip and slide whenever I get off the bike.

I could/should just buy a new pair but I don't ride my road bike very much anymore so it seems pointless.

However I needed them for this week so screwed some spare rubber garden furniture feet that were in my garage directly into the remaining sole.

Job done, no more slipping and sliding.

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Before ebikes became a thing those conversions were the most common form of conveyance for the lost license crowd around here.

Thanks. It's been holding strong for a long time now.

re-wrap frayed cable ends using a cable tie

I need a follow-up bodge to this please. The frayed end is fairly tidy and glued but it needs to be circular. At the moment it's ovoid. What can I do? It has to fit through the tiniest hole on the caliper. So tiny that a perfectly round new cable only just fits. OK, I could fit a new cable, but one day I might need a bodge in the field. Knowledge is power.

Also, please recommend wire cutters which cut brake cables cleanly!

Knipex makes quality cutters, or Dremel.

Is there a nice bit between the cable end and the pinch bolt you can trim back to?

Any half-decent wire cutters should do the job. I can even get a perfectly fine result with a good pair of sidecutters.

That would probably work. And I don't need cutters, I need to find my multitool. I forgot I had it. Don't know where it is. It's got clever jaws with lots of leverage. I've cut lots of cables with it in the past.

I lost my tool to remove the NDS cap on my 105 cranks to remove the arm. Turns out that jamming a couple of allen keys (I think 5mm and 8mm) in there works extremely effectively instead!

i've used Park Tools tyre levers for the same thing

imo, best cutters are bike specific eg. park tool. Knipex / CK cutters are usually for Cu / Al and will blunt if you use on steel too much

Not exactly a field bodge, possibly not even a bodge:
If there's enough length, find a pristine bit of cable and flood it with solder. I use a gas torch and silver solder - some will say this is excessive, but cable coatings often don't play nicely with soft solder.
Cut through the centre of the soldered section with a Dremel cutting disc.
Use a grinding wheel to round off the cut edges for easier insertion.

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You can also cut and finish cable at the same time with a welder. Stick, mig or tig. Turn up the power and one quick as you like zap cut and finished in one easy move. Occasionally you may have to give the end a bit of a file to tidy it up a little.

Nice!

Peak lfgss.com.

Yeah, I've tried in vain to use a cheap soldering iron and electronic solder to finish a cable - didn't take with a storm lighter either.

i don't know if its still used, but around the time I was leaving Brompton, they started using some kind of laser tool to zap cut cables without fraying. was actually pretty cool

You have also described the way a laser welding machine works. They are really awesome.

Ah, didnt know laser welding was a thing! Also this tool was like, handheld and you didn’t have to wear a helmet or anything so I didn’t equate it with welding at the time

Knipex cutters vary in hardness, mine are rated at 64 HRC, I suggest that is more than adequate and possibly more than Park Tool. Where do you read they’re meant for alu?

I'm not surprised a handheld laser wire cutter exists - it sounds really useful in a production environment. I think most laser welding is done by robots for mass production/high precision stuff on very thin metal.

There's handheld laser rust/paint removal tools as well - youtube certainly makes it look impressive.

I'm talking about cable croppers to be fair, have blunted a few pairs .

I use a gas torch

But you can weld with some match heads. Field solutions only please. https://youtu.be/_7rRbrujAk0?si=FQA4ihPAigrpDsfF

I am still struggling. The jaws of my SOG multitool could do clean cuts when they were new, but now they're crap, even when glueing the cable before cutting. I've even tried filing the cable after cutting. What a crummy way to waste an afternoon. So I've ordered £12.99 cutters from Amazon, free delivery tomorrow with a free trial of the society-destroying Amazon Prime. I hate myself.

This seems the opposite of a hack/bodge but I'm buggered if I can think of a phrase/word to describe what it is.

I did say "possibly not even a bodge" by way of introduction - offered as an alternative method when superglue doesn't quite hack it?
Soft solder can be made to work with enough flux (cored solder isn't enough) and a 25W iron, but this also fails at the 'field solution' requirement...

Yes, I'm just more annoyed that I can't think of what an alterative phrase to the opposite of hack/bodge is.