While disassembling my Wild Thumper (for unrelated reasons), I discovered one of the steel wire suspension limiters had detached. So I decided to repair it with whatever I had in the house. Which happens to be copper wire and soldering tools.
Here's the problem:
The wire is looped and the two ends were held together with some sort of soft metal crimper. And that crimper has come loose. So I figured I could make my own crimper. Out of the soft metals I have on stock: Cu, Sn and Pb.
Make my soldering iron a bit hotter than usual and soak the ■■■■ out of the copper.
Clean it up a bit for the "final" photo.
Notice that the steel does not adhere to the solder. For extra grip, I crimped the wrapper with flat nose pliers. That's a 7.5 mm resistor for scale. Total length of the cable turned out to be less than original. So I attached it to another screw hole in the motor house, to compensate.
I put everything back together and jiggled the assembly a bit to test out how sturdy my repair is. Well..... as it turns out: sturdier than the original!
I just hope I've got sufficient length of steel left to repeat my trick. Or I'll have to find a local supplier of thin bicycle braking cable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTTplMSybJQ