Kevlar rope for repairing BD Ultralights

Found the cable on a #4 Ultralight had snapped when I pulled it out of my pack at the base of Long John. I don't know when the cable broke nor what the cause was. My partner and I used the cam anyway and extracted it with a nut tool.

I decided to go with the kevlar rope fix since it seemed easy and bomber. Here's what I learned:

Bought a 300' spool of Kevlar-Aramid cord from atwoodrope.com/ for $12. It's red, .75mm or 1/32" and has an 85 lb test strength. Use some sharp wire snips to cut the old wire, slide the sleeves off, and use your multi-tool to straighten and remove the old trigger wire. That was the easy part.

After some tears and swear words, I found an effective way to thread the cord through the tiny trigger wire holes. First I tried threading some sewing thread through the hole with a needle, tying a knot to the cord, and pulling it through. This worked once and then didn't work again. I tried using dental floss but the floss snapped. 

After failing to pull the cord through, I found that I could unbraid the cord (a sewing needle helps), apply some wood glue on two strands, thread those two strands through (since they're small enough to easily slide through the trigger cable hole) and then pull the rest of the cord through the hole. I read on a rocketry forum that wood glue is an effective way to finish the strands of kevlar cord. Seems to be working so far. I used my rope-marking pen to mark where I needed to knot the cord to make it the correct length. I dabbed the knot with wood glue and trimmed the excess cord.

The only drawback is that you will have a floppy trigger; wire cables hold the trigger in place but the kevlar rope doesn't provide such support. I don't think this is going to be a deal-breaker since after unclipping a cam, I grab the biner with my teeth so I can reposition my hand to grab the trigger anyway. On the plus side, I believe the kevlar cord will last as long as the cam. I didn't want to use the same type of wire cable and experience the same break.

Etsy sells small wood glue packets that could fit in your field repair kit. So if you were going on a trip to Yosemite / The Creek / The Gunks and you're carrying BD Ultralights, this approach might make sense. It seems thin cam wires like these are prone to breaking. Here's a photo before I trimmed the excess cord. I also replaced the wire cable on the other side of the cam as a preventative.