Heh. Just this morning i was soldering a different cable between my cyclocomputer mount and sensor. I got a Planet Bike Protege 9.0, which is a really nice looking computer with a huge ugly thick black cable. I replaced it with some thin clear insulated copper speaker wire, which looks quite nice.

The two inner strands are indeed a headache to work with though.. they are the type of twisted copper wire that is both hair-thin and varnished - if you don't remove the varnish, the solder won't stick and you won't have a connection. I found the best way was to hold the tip of the wire in a lighter flame for a second or two to burn off the varnish, then clean the soot off with rubbing alcohol.


What i thought would be a 15 minute job ended up taking at least an hour, but the cable is now nice and unobtrusive, and the perfect length.

BTW - i coated the connections with beeswax and then put heatshrink over them, so it should be pretty waterproof.