How I fixed the broken clip on my Clip+

First time poster here. I’ve had my Clip+ for over a year now and I absolutely love it. Last week, tragedy stuck while I was jumping rope and listening to my Clip+. The headphone cable flew out a little too far from my body (it runs behind my back) and got snagged by the jumprope. In spectacular fashion, it whipped the Clip+ off my waistband and threw it to the ceiling of the gym. The trip up may not have been so bad but the landing probably hurt. Anyway, I pick up my Clip+ and it looks like this:

The broken Clip+

It actually looked worse, the backplate was nearly off but that was an easy fix. Anyway, so the actual clip had snapped off. You can’t really see from the picture but the rings on the body had snapped in half and the hinge had flown off with the still-intact rings on the clip. I decided to try to drill holes through the backplate and thread wire to hold the hinge. I didn’t have a small enough drill bit so used a fine cutting bit from a dremel kit like this:

The cutting bit (penny added for scale)

I made four small holes and threaded some 24 gauge wire through the holes and around the hinge. Then I twisted the wires together on the inside of the backplate to pull the hinge against the remains of the backplate’s rings. The inside looks like this:

Inside of backplate

And the outside looks like this:

This

And this

And it works pretty well. It holds on my waistband just like it used to. It isn’t perfect. While the spring action works fine, the repair is unsurprisingly weak against lateral and torsional force. The day after I fixed my Clip+ I went for a run and then slid into my car with the Clip+ on my waist only to find that the clip came off when the Clip+ got between me and the seat. The problem wasn’t really the wire but rather the twist I used. I had broken the wire in my effort to make the twist as tight as possible. This is a good point for anyone else attempting this. I initially grabbed the wire too close to the holes and twisted too tight. This caused the wire to snap at the twist. In case anyone is wondering, I used these pliers. The subsequent repair used a twist that started slightly farther away from the holes. And I put a dab of superglue on the twists just for good measure. 

Anyway, just thought I’d share my experience since it seems like I’m not the only one who has come up against this problem. I hope this gives a couple people ideas if they have the same issue I had.

Good for you!   :)    And much more energetic than I could ever be.   

Thanks for the detailed description of what to do when your clip breaks off. The clip broke off of mine a few months ago and I rather extravagantly went out and bought a new one (with increased storage capacity). The broken one had had a couple of years of heavy use, so it wasn’t a surprise when it broke. If there’s a next time, I’ll return here for instructions on what to do.