Audiovox Cruise Control cable attachment alternative

If you are mounting the CCS-100 on a Honda ST-1300, beware!  Several parts of the throttle body are intended to never be messed with.  The nut that retains the throttle cable drum and spring is one of these, and when reattaching it, stripping the stud that runs through the left side of the throttle body is very, very easy.  These parts are not available separately.  Replacing the throttle body is about $650 from Ron Ayers!

If you haven't guessed already, I stripped the throttle drum bolt while attaching the throttle bracket for my CCS-100 cruise control.  Fortunately, removing the bracket allowed me to reattach the nut to the threads that had been covered when the bracket was on.  However, this left me needing a new way to hook in the cruise control to the throttle.  Here's what I came up with:

First, we need to know how much travel there is in the existing cable.  Rotate the throttle all the way open and mark where the throttle cable exits the cable housing.  I used a red magic marker.  When you close the throttle, you should observe how much distance is between the mark and the throttle drum.  Another mark about 1/4" before the point where the cable contacts the drum probably would not hurt, though I didn't do this.

Now close the throttle and make sure that the mark doesn't roll up onto the throttle drum.

Now find one of the cables with a loop in the end that came with the CCS-100.  Cut the loop off.  Now find a piece of brass tubing.  I'm pretty sure I used 3/16".  Split about 1/2" to 3/4" of the tubing.  Insert the point of an Xacto knife blade until the back and edge of the blade both make contact with opposite sidewalls of the tubing and then pry up the end of the knife.  Now cut the split end off of the brass tubing.  This will be used to crimp the cable from the cruise control onto the throttle cable.

Place the barrel at the throttle body end of the throttle cable flat on a table - the barrel should be on its side, not on an end.  Place the cut end of the cable from the cruise control kit on top of the throttle cable close to the mark that you made.  If you made two marks, the cable should go between them.  Place the brass tubing over the two cables and crimp it down with an automotive connector crimping tool or a pair of pliers - make sure the cruise control cable stays roughly on top of the throttle cable while you are crimping.  Once you have a solid crimp, place some paste soldering flux over the split in the brass crimp.  Using a soldering gun or iron, heat the cables and crimp until they take solder and flood the crimp with solder.  Be careful not to get excess solder on the cables outside of the crimp - this could interfere with the throttle cable sliding freely.

Here are some pictures of the finished product before installation in the motorcycle.  It took me about 45 minutes from conception to finished product.

And here are some pictures of the cable installed.