Gikfun 40 Pin Cable GPIO Flat Ribbon Cable for Raspberry Pi B+ DIY EK1694

so I had the unfortunate mishap of accidentally damaging these four or five cables so rather than ordering a new one or waiting for one to arrive or purchasing any one I thought hey I might as well go ahead and repair this this is about 11 or 12 year old ribbon cable I think they're still readily available but again I'm not gonna sit there and waste time when I can fix it myself so the first thing that I need to do is I need to locate some wire that has the approximate same gauge as the one that I'm replacing I had this is an old HP printer so I went ahead and just used the wires and that's just recycled over so after determining what the length was I went ahead and cut it a little bit longer than what I need just so I have some extra play-- and then I need to take this external housing off this connector this connection right here that I'm taking off is has two purposes one it relieves