first of all, let’s lay out the problem at hand.
(above photo photo courtesy of nospartsnow.com)
this is what this motorcycle’s front brake switch should look like. in short, its the thingy that makes the taillight light up when you squeeze the front brake; when the brake lever is at rest, it is squeezing this switch into the off position (pressed in). and as for the one taken from our motorcycle…
it is notably missing the little plunger piece. but that is not too big an issue provided we can exercise a little creativity :3
first of all, we needed something that would, well, fit. given this was a japanese bike, we grabbed some metric screwdriver bits that were mostly circular to use as guage pins.
and this 2mm one fits perfectly! now, we just needed something of that diameter.
at first we were thinking of using the wire from this clip. but it turns out it was really REALLY hard to cut. so after some more rummaging…
behold, the ballpen! (apologies for the blurry photo)
some pliers made it fairly trivial to extract the nib. and one slight dab of superglue later, we should have something!
unfortunately it turns out the ball in the tip caused the plunger to lean to one side MASSIVELY when pressed on. a pair of wirecutters will solve that in a very literal pinch thankfully ^w^
and with this, the switch functions oncemore, for only the cost of a broken pen!!!
stay comfy y’all <3