Reusing old iron with stiff wires.

[printer2]

Does anyone have a good way of softening up the wires of old transformers? I guess I would not feel like bending much either if I stayed in one position for the last 60 years but I need to fit them in my chassis.

[eleventeen]

What's stiff is the insulation. I'd try a hair dryer, or if you have any where you are, leave it out in the sun and tweak the wires after the thing is warmed up for a few hours.

[dude]

If eleventeen's trick doesn't work, maybe just cutting the wires at the transformer and add new wire using heat shrink...?

al

[printer2]

Trying to avoid splicing wires, did that on my current build.





The insulation on that one was really brittle and it cracked coming out of the bell, the new (old) one is not quite as bad. Think I will try warming them up, put some heat shrink over the wires and heat again.

[eleventeen]

That looks pretty good. It appears that you have double-insulated the splices and taken the second (outside) sleeve all the way back as far as you can towards the tranny, while not tightening the tie-wraps around the bundle any more than necessary...and I completely support that technique.

From the looks of your first tranny, it looks like it had a bottom end-bell where all the wires came out one central hole. I assume you left that bell off the final deal.

[birt]

i mostly just try not to bend them too much but install a terminal strip close to where they were. from there i connect new wires.

[printer2]

That looks pretty good. It appears that you have double-insulated the splices and taken the second (outside) sleeve all the way back as far as you can towards the tranny, while not tightening the tie-wraps around the bundle any more than necessary...and I completely support that technique.

From the looks of your first tranny, it looks like it had a bottom end-bell where all the wires came out one central hole. I assume you left that bell off the final deal.

No room in the bell with all the splicing, just enough for the original wires. I wanted to leave as much alone of the original leads as possible, they really did not want to be moved. Just taking the transformer out of its original chassis caused the cracked insulation at the hole in the bell.