in the past I have used a 2mm cloth covered wire when rewiring my bikes and it looks very appropriate on an old bike. I am now having trouble finding any and wondered if anyone can point me in the direction of a supplier. If not then what else do people use to give a vintage look? Cheers John

email (option): tinley@btinternet.com

Hi JT....

Best supplier for cloth covered cable and slip-on coloured rubber sleeves was "Electrical Engineering Services" in Lancashire.....it's modern cable but sleeved in cloth and available in various thicknesses...

Seemingly, according to Rik, a better wartime period look for the old rubber-covered cable is to use thick modern plastic cable of the appropriate width and simply rub a scourer pad along the length to dull down the finish...! Haven't yet tried this, but sounds promising....

I'm certainly pleased with the effect on mine and the extra copper to arrive at the correct OD can't be a bad thing. My original loom was all rubber (and all black apart from the dip switch wiring).

On Lex's suggestion, I used a very small cross section cycle inner tube for the headstock sleeving and that looks very convincing too.

Also go for the highest number of individual copper wires for a given diameter of cable that you can find. Lucas M/Cycle spec. wire had 34 or 38 I think. This was done to enhance the flexibility of the wire for M/Cycle applications. Perhaps someone could count the wires in a wartime piece of cable to see if that applied at the time?.....Ian