Featherweight Foot Pedal

The new wire came yesterday.  That was fast.  Seventy four feet of  18 AWG SPT-2 wire.  I had ordered one hundred.  What was I thinking????  There was only 74 feet in stock.  That is probably a good thing for me.  I used close to eleven feet today, though, and with all of the mahines I have that need new wiring, seventy four feet may be just fine.

I rewired the foot pedal today. I did not feel like soldering so I just  wound the wire round the connectors.  I did use the sheathing on the new wire.  Why not? I had meant to do that with the 15-91 but forgot.

The first thing I did was take the four screws out of the bottom of the foot pedal and pried the top off. I love my Brownell Bits.  Maybe I have said that before.  The 240 -4 fit the screws in the foot pedal feet just perfectly

Then I identified the white wire at the other end and followed it all the way back to the foot pedal.   I marked the wire all the way down to the foot pedal every few inches with a white dot of paint from a paint pen.  I wanted to make sure that I had the right wire.  I could not tell which wire was the white wire because of the sheathing on the wires at the foot pedal end.

 Then I changed my mind and decided to use black tape to ID the black wire in the foot pedal and changed everything from white tape to black tape.

 After that I measured out a length of new wire the same length as the old wire.  I arbitrarily decided that the smooth side of the new wire would correspond to the old white wire ( yellow tape)  I marked the smooth side all the way to the other end with a dot of paint from the paint pen every few inches.  Just to keep things organized in my mind...Then I measured the length of  new wire  that I would need to separate....

And I scored the insulation, separated the two pieces of wire and stripped off enough insulation  to fit under the connector screws.  I removed the white wire from the foot pedal, slipped the sheathing off of it and on to the new wire. I then attached the new wire to the connector on the foot pedal. I kept the other old piece of wire (the black one ) attached so that I would not get confused...

I then disconnected the black wire, slipped off its sheathing and placed it on the new wire.
this is easier to do before stripping insulation.  Learn by doing.  Then I stripped the insulation from this side and attached it to the foot pedal.  I used a small screw driver bit to tuck the wire under the screw connector.  This makes the connection look neater.

I then tightened the screw connectors, just snug,not too tight and test fitted the top.  The wire must fit through the hole that was pried open to remove the top.  If it doesn't then adjustments must be made.  You can see that the fit is quite snug since it left a mark on the wire after I tested the fit.

Replace the rubber feet and screws and tighten the screws.  It is always best to tighten each screw a little bit all the way around so that you get an even fit.  Then go back and tighten each screw completely.





I do love the look of new wire. 

Coming up next post...rewiring the plug.