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SRAM eTap wire extensions?
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Has anyone made extensions to eTap wires? I have 650mm Clic buttons on my aero extensions, but they're not quite long enough to route interally to my Blipbox on my Giant Trinity Advanced.

I figure 6 inches longer would do the trick, but I'd rather not cut my Clic wires to lengthen them if I can avoid it, though I'd love to hear from anyone who has done that as well.

Has anyone come up with extension cables that have a female plug on one end for the Clic to plug into, and a male plug on the other to plug into the Blipbox? If anyone has made them themselves, any info would be appreciated since the plug bodies seem non-standard.

Of course, if someone's already made something like this I'd be happy to pay for a set!

-Dan
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Re: SRAM eTap wire extensions? [overridex] [ In reply to ]
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Don't think there are off the shelf extensions you can buy. I did read somewhere (can't remember if it was on ST or another forum) a post by someone who cut and extended his clics himself to mount the blipbox under his saddle. He used standard thin speaker wires (like for earphones). Apparently the soldering was very fiddly as the clic wires are tiny, but it can be done by someone handy with a soldering iron.

Maybe get an electronics repair shop to do it professionally for you?
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Re: SRAM eTap wire extensions? [overridex] [ In reply to ]
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No quite the same, but I've made custom blips for my bike. I'd imagine extending the current blip wires would only be a simple cut, splice, and solder job.

Strava
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Re: SRAM eTap wire extensions? [overridex] [ In reply to ]
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I ended up cutting and soldering extensions into my Clics, so here's some info that might help others.

First, I figured I needed about 6 inches of additional length based on routing the wire through my Giant Trinity and seeing how short I came up. I then grabbed an old 12v DC AC adapter for something I no longer had since the wire was a decent size. I cut my pair of 6 inch pieces from that.

Next, I cut the Clic about 2.5" inches from the button - I wanted to make sure I had some wiggle room if something didn't go right and I needed to cut it again and retry, but I also wanted the extension pieces to be close to the button to be hidden in my aero extensions. Since they'll be a little thicker I didn't want them complicating routing the wire around in the handlebars and frame.

After that, I stripped the wires. This was easy with the extra wire I had cut using a standard pair of wire strippers. The Clic wires though, were too thin to strip with those, I used a different blade to nick the surface of the insulation enough to pull it off, I did this about 0.5" from the end of the wires. Then, to strip the even smaller red and black wires inside that, I used fingernail clippers lightly to again nick the insulation and then pull it off with my fingers. After that I twisted the ends to smooth them out, and tinned them with some solder.




At this point I checked if the heat shrink tubing I had (3/16" to 3/32") would fit over the plugs, and it wouldn't, so I cut two pieces about 2" long and put them on the wire before soldering it, pushing them down to the plug and out of the way for now.

I then held the tinned ends together of the Clic wires and the new length and touched them to my soldering iron to solder them together. I made sure to match the same color to the dotted wire of my extra wire so that the ends were consistent with each other. I then wrapped each soldered joint with a small piece of electrical tape.



Next, I put the heat shrink tubes over each area and heated them using a heat gun on low until they were shrunk snugly. The first time I did this I used the high temperature and it melted the electrical tape on the inside causing a short to where the button always showed as if it was pressed when I plugged it into the Blipbox to test it, so I cut the wires again and re-did things, making the extra wire I was adding slightly longer to make up for the pieces I cut off.



Once the heat wrap tubing was good, I plugged it into my Blipbox and checked that pressing the button flashes the green light as expected. I then routed the wires through my handlebars and frame and into my Blipbox. I'm waiting on Blips to come to put by my brake levers, once I run those internally I'll post something about routing all that on the Giant Trinity specifically.

Hope this is helpful to someone,

-Dan
Last edited by: overridex: Dec 4, 18 20:59
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