*Problem
encountered It proves rather difficult nowadays to obtain electric cables or wires
with a outer covering made other than from plastics material. For the restoration
of old motorbikes such electric cables are aesthetically unacceptable.
Some suppliers have old stock or remanufacture for the restorer certain
sizes of wires and cables, these have a woven outer covering or other originally
used material, but the prices are relatively high and the choice is rather
limited.
Moreover, the quality, in particular when used on a motorcycle, is
generally insufficient to allow repeated bending and sliding movements
such as occurs in cables going to the head lamp.
Modern cables and wires are in this respect much better and can be
obtained in many different sizes. Therefore it would be better to use the
modern wiring with a strong fabric woven covering for the right appearance.
However, no supplier for such covering could be located.
*Solution
found When looking around for an alternative it emerged that some ropes for
sailing boats or mountain climbing consist of a number of concentric woven
fabric tubes.
In most shops for sailing equipment there is a large variety of these
ropes available at very reasonable prices. I selected a finely woven rope
about 1 cm thick which consisted of three concentric woven tubes. It proved
very easy to separate the tubes because the inner diameter increases when
the covering tube is axially compressed.
This also means that a certain size of fabric tube can be used as a
covering for a number of wire or cable sizes; by pulling at both ends the
covering adapts itself to the diameter of the cable inside.
In my case 2 m of rope gave 3X2 = 6m of different diameter woven tubes
and also the possibility of covering the whole range of diameter sizes
in between; this length normally suffices for any old motorcycle.
The ropes are often only available in white with some decoration in
other colours such as blue or red. However, I found that the covering can
be given almost any colour by using shoe polish. Black shoe polish gives
a nice dark greyish blue which proves in most cases to be ideal.
*Fixing
the cables to the frame tubes In order to fix the cables to the frame tubes I cut small rubber strips
from an old bicycle inner tube and used these to wrap the frame tube together
with the cable. The strip end is fixed by means of a tiny drop of so-called
"superglue" (cyanoacrylic glue) which works particularly well on (clean)
rubber surfaces. The overlapping stepped-end may be abraded to become smooth
with the rest of the surface to achieve the correct appearance. Apply some
black shoe polish here and nobody will notice that there is a joint.
Such fixing by means of rubber strips is particularly easy to use,
looks good and leaves no markings on either the frame tubes or cables.