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Hi there. We must have meet somewhere in Europe perhaps as you know my second bike racing name. 🤣🤣🤣


Nick the Velo builder  basically taught me his methodology. It critical to get the two hole sizes correct. One a firm fit on the wire cable and the second big enough to fully retain the turned back birdnested cable strands.


Nick uses a pair of fine needle nose pliers and turns every strand back on itself one by one carefully creating a ball of wire that fills the larger hole. He can take an hour or more to carefully do a brake cable nipple. Then clean everything in a flux. Then hold the nipple in a vice and pull down on the cable getting the strands perfectly bunched into the large hole in the nipple. Then use what we term silver solder.  About 3 or 4 % silver content solder using a large soldering iron.


A cable made this way is 100 % reliable but of course still checked for every race meeting.


I have found commercially made  throttle   clutch and most critically a rear brake cable which had no birdsnesting of the wire whatsoever. I cannot name names because I simple don't remember the manufacturer. It was maybe 20 plus years ago now but I still will only do my own cables.


Doing a set of twin throttle and choke cables is very tedious but unfortunately still necessary in my experience. I still remember the look of misery on Nicks face as their very first Velo KTT came to a halt half way through its first race at the very  first meeting. The nipple pulled off the commercial throttle cable. 🙄


For carbs the nipples in the slide are very small but provided you can get at least 2 or 3 stands reversed into the nipple a throttle cable will be strong enough plus your life doesn't depend on it anyway.


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