[Spridgets] Heater fresh air pull

[Tim Collins]

Hi folks,
I needed to put the battery charger on my Sprite the other day. Later 
when removing the charger cable (that I had attached to the battery 
terminal of the solenoid) I noticed an orange glow (glowing like the 
metal on the edge of a knife) under the hood with me. I had touched 
the pull cable for the fresh air pull - (part of the heater fan 
switch) with the charger clamp. I quickly repositioned the charger 
clamp, but the damage was done. I couldn't activate the pull. I first 
though I might have welded it to the outer cable, but the problem was 
that when the wire cooled, it warped so wouldn't fit into the outer 
sheath. I figured I could straighten it enough for it to work - I was 
wrong. The heating and cooling made the wire so brittle that it just 
broke. So I began to plan a fix.

This looked like it should be a fairly easy repair. Just replace the 
wire with a longer one. However, the end of the wire in the switch 
has a ball on the end. I checked the Spridget archive and sure enough 
Frank C had written about such a repair. His method was to MIG weld a 
ball onto the replacement wire and also involved un-soldering the 
sheath from the switch. Welding a ball onto the end of a wire sorta 
seemed like trying to weld an angel's boot to the head of a pin. 
Frank's success rate was 50% for the two he worked on.

I found I could remove the wire from the switch assembly thanks to an 
access hole that allowed me to push to ball out of the retaining 
hole. I just grabbed it then and pulled - short wire out! I began 
thinking of ways to put a ball on the end of the new wire. I 
considered a ball bearing, but rejected that as a being a weak butt 
joint especially if using solder. I figured I wasn't going to be able 
to drill a hole in a ball bearing either. I looked for a pull chain 
(from a light fixture or key chain) to use a ball from that chain, 
but my chains were too small. I spotted a brass braising rod that had 
a ball on the end. That looked promising. So I drilled a hole in the 
brass ball, cut it loose from rod and slipped it over the tinned 
wire. Then I soldered it all together and filed it into a rough ball 
shape. I reassembled everything and it works well now. Anyhow, that's 
how I made a fix to a Spridget part that isn't readily available 
anymore and wasn't really so bad that it needed replacing - just 
repair. Here's a pic:

[]


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