HOW I FIXED IT: Headset cable damage from too much twisting (random blue noise, lines, blackout)

[thrillux]

My rift started showing random blue noise pixels and lines, and eventually started blacking out completely unless I bent it just right.
I had already ordered a replacement cable, and it finally went black completely, so I figured frack it, let's open it up and see what's going on here.

Warning: I am 100% certain Oculus is going to find this post problematic, but maybe they'll leave it up if I tell you YOU SHOULD NOT DO THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!  THIS IS NOT A "HOW TO FIX YOUR CABLE" GUIDE, IT IS A FACTUAL REPORT OF A TOTALLY BAD WRONG THING TO DO I'M SURE, AND PROBABLY VOIDS ALL YOUR WARRANTIES ON EVERYTHING IN YOUR HOUSE.  PLEASE DON'T GO CUT INTO YOUR CABLE UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO NOT ONLY POSSIBLY DESTROY YOUR CABLE, BUT YOUR RIFT AS WELL, POSSIBLY YOUR COMPUTER, I DON'T KNOW, MAYBE YOUR DOG TOO.  WHO KNOWS.

I found the spot where my cord was having issues by looking for bulges / ridges where the internals had been twisted internally out of place.  Luckily it was glaringly obvious where the problem was, as it was the biggest deformity along the cable:
The spot was right outside the cable clip, where it flexed the most during regular use.

I VERY carefully and patiently used small haircut scissors to poke in  under the rubber and tiny snip by tiny snip, I cut about 1" down the length of the sheath over the bulge, making sure to keep the cable still and flat, so I wouldn't break any of the delicate wires inside by flexing or manhandling it too much without its rubber.holding things together.

I cut another 1" slit down the opposite side, then snipped across the middle of both slits, peeled back the two flaps, and BEHOLD:
The metal braiding inside was absolutely DESTROYED.  It frayed and broken quite a bit, and was no longer effectively holding things together and in place inside.
Half of the internal wires had become bunched into a U that wrapped around and was causing the bulge.

Already, my headset image had reappeared, and didn't even have the blue noise / lines!!!

I cleared & cut away the mess of frayed braiding that was obviously bunching up and causing the U to get pulled into that shape around the center (extremely careful to make sure none of the tiny wires in there had gotten pulled into the metal mess, waiting for me to snip it).

I don't know if this helped things or not, but I tried to get the extra bunched-up U part of the wires back into either side of the sheath, but I doubt it did much.  I didn't notice that much of an effect.  However, what I did was I flexed the cable to match the U bend so the wires were more in-place (curving the pulled portion outside of the bend more taut over the surface of the rest of the cable, applied pressure with my thumb (probably not a great idea, if the braiding was actually shorting something in there, or one of the wires could be shorted - I dunno.

At this point I felt like some Nikola Tesla God of Electronics, so I just followed my impulses, ignoring every printed warning I've ever seen.  I wasn't about to stop now.

Anyway, the next step was making sure that part didn't flex much ever again, as I was sure the wires there were on their last legs, having been stressed / bent enough to cause the noise and even blackouts.  I cut a ballpoint pen down the long side, then the other side, snipped the pen shell down to about 1.5" and duct-taped that whole section securely cradled in the hard pen shell,  to keep the innards as still as possible.

I didn't want to let it just hang out the cable clip at that spot anymore, since it was damaged, so I sacrificed a few inches of length by anchoring the cable behind the clip so there is a nice arc of cable between the clip and the headset, that's long enough to fully pull back the springloaded side-straps without causing further bends on either side of my pen-shell-splinted segment.

To make sure this didn't happen again with the new spot where the cable comes out of the clip, I took the small plastic ink tube inside the pen and duct taped it along the cable with about 2/3rds of the length going out of the clip, and 1/3rd going in.  
I wrapped more duct-tape on the cable to taper the flex from the end of the ink tube and not just fold there either.

The end result is fantastic.  Complete recovery, and I thought I would be out of Rift completely until the replacement cable got here.

[666OculusClassAction]

THIS IS WRONG.... OCULUS SHOULD SELL THE REPLACEMENT CABLE AND GIVE LINGERING SUPPORT FOR THOSE OF US WHO STILL USE OUR OCULUS RIFT S HARDWARE. I HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT THE MONEY YOU SPENT ON YOUR SOFTWARE TITLES CANNOT BE USED ON ANY OTHER FORM OF OCULUS HARDWARE CREATED TODAY OR EVER... IF YOUR CABLE DIES YOU ARE OUT OF LUCK... YOU ALREADY PAID FOR EVERYTHING FROM THIS COMPANY AND THEY DROPPED SUPPORT FOR YOU.

[ActivityCenter]

I absolutely agree with you.  Same thing happened to me.  TWICE.  Customer service was of no help.  They kept telling me "before we send you any replacement we need to run this test and that log..."  They basically gave my busy work I wouldn't be able to figure out how to do just to save them from having to support the product I already purchased.  I actually just went on craigslist and bought someone's used rift s for about $150 just to get the extra cord.  It is nice bonus now to have extra headset and controllers as a backup