@ Credo....... Am I right on the estimate of the wire gauge the manufacturer is using for the Bolt (26 or 28 Ga)? I have not pried mine apart but from pics it looks pretty thin. What size wire did you rewire with? I have been meaning to do some surgery on this thing and your post has pushed me over the edge
No idea...one cool thing about wire...it's pretty hard to get it 'too big' and it still be able to fit inside a bolt
With that in mind look in your junk pile for dead stuff that has wire in/on it and cut a chunk out. You'll want a wire large enough to handle 3 or so amps.
I just took a dead ATX computer power supply and cut about an inch of that off one of the molex plugs intended to plug into a hard drive. Shouldn't matter if you choose yellow, red, or black wire from the ATX standard...it's all the same gage, and should be well more than enough to safely do this job without adding any noticeable extra resistance to the circuit.
First I stripped and tinned to half inch pieces of wire (could go shorter with the wires...but I'm not as dexterous in my old age...so I wanted some room to work with).
Next I soldered one end of the first wire piece to the gold button that touches the top of your Kick/Battery. Then I
threaded that part back into place in the Bolt. Next I soldered one end of the second wire piece to the center post of the 510 connector inside the Bolt. Finally I soldered in the switch...making sure there would be no way for wires to short with button pushing/twisting. I backed the button out and injected mounds of hot glue in there...pushed the button back in while still good and hot, and put it in a table vice just tight enough to hold the button in place to cool off (10 minutes or so should be good, but I let mine sit there over an hour...could use rubber bands, or weights, or whatever if you don't have a vice handy).
No idea what exact size that wire I used is (way over-rated for our needs here) but it'll certainly get the job done safely. I'm guessing my wire is copper (possibly some grade of aluminum), and no problem with it handling the 2 to 3 amp current possible with the Kicked
mod.
In short...if you have a little bigger wire than you need it won't hurt a thing. It's just when it's too small and flimsy with cheap insulation that it becomes an issue.
I put the original switch back in for the time being...if you need another one find a switch rated for at least 3 amps of similar size/shape that'll fit in the hole. I think the name for that style switch in electronics stores is 'horn switch', meaning it only makes contact whilst it is HELD DOWN.
Yep, for me it it really does work 200 times better...before I rewired it I'd get a few puffs and it'd act like the battery was dead! I'd unscrew the Bolt, put it back together, and get a few more puffs. First I got conductive aluminum paste to put on the threads thinking that was the problem...but still no dice. As a last ditch effort I decided to rewire the thing.
After swapping out the wire things just started working...now battery life is more like 4 to 8 hours (or more depending on the carto and other stuff). I use Drew's purple 18500
batteries from his "Kick Kit".
