Originally Posted by
steelbikeguy
I normally just place connectors near the headlight, tail light, and dynamo. I can normally keep the wires tied up to the bracket that the item mounts to. If you don't need to make a disconnection at these vertical runs of wire, maybe you can move the connectors near the lights?
Sure, good advice. Here, there were other considerations, though. The two ends, where the connectors could be moved, were already overcrowded, so midway became a choice. Another, is that I ended up combining components not originally meant to work together and I wanted to retain as much of original wire as possible not wanting to venture yet into opening them. With this the connectors ended up being wherever the wire ran out.
Originally Posted by
steelbikeguy
indeed... it's all a matter of trading off the priorities and making compromises between them.
I haven't thought much about field repairs. I solder the wire in my connector pins and use heatshrink to provide strain relief (i.e. keep them from flexing near the area where the solder has wicked up the wire strands). This, along with good support of the wires, has provided very reliable wiring.
I should say that I've worked with electronics and wiring for most of my professional life, and have seen a lot of failures at connectors. Some were my fault, I have to admit. That was where I learned about the damage from overcrimping a wire in a connector pin or terminal lug.
Properly done, wires and connectors can be very reliable.
Bike electrics is quite a niche area. Economically, it does not make much sense to optimize connectors specifically for such a market. In practice we have to repurpose connectors optimized for something else. That leads to maybe more struggle than elsewhere. To ensure strain relief on a bike, I now start putting a piece of a shift cable into the heatshrink sleeve.