Considering the general trend of sloppy wiring practices that I’ve encountered on cars over the years, I figured I’d make this little ‘how to’. Hope it helps someone.
What you need to know before you attempt terminating-yellow means 10-12 gauge, blue means 14-16 gauge, red means 16-22 gauge. When in doubt, just use the color that fits the tightest on the stripped wire, without bending any of the strands back.
Needed tools-
Ratcheting crimpers-if you don’t have ratcheting crimpers, you can’t make a decent crimp. Get some, they are cheap. “Parts Express” sells, and ships them cheap.
Wire strippers
Cutters-your standard dykes will work, but the proper tool ones are ‘flush cutters’. Cheap, and again, Parts Express carries these.
Time to go to work!
Pic of aforementioned tools-
Step 1-strip wire to proper length. Proper length is where very little to no wire is protruding from the non-insulated side of the connector that you’re attaching, and no uninsulated wire can be seen hanging out of the insulated side of the connector. Take a look inside the connector, you’ll see what the ‘perfect’ length is.
Picture below shows the wire/connector pre-crimp, you can see very little to no wire hanging out of the end.
Step 2-insert connector into the crimp tool. The side of the connector barrel with the split goes towards the male/small side of the crimp tool. Sqeeze the tool (ha ha), and it’ll ratchet to the perfect tightness and release.
Pic of completed crimp-
That’s it! I’ll post a soldering how-to here in a few days.
Yeah I actually crimp insulated connectors incorrectly but have had better luck with how I do it. But I do prefer solder and adhesive lines heat shrink tubing.
Solder is an electrical connection, not a strong mechanical one. In situations where things are vibrating, crimps are better. If you feel like being really overkill about it, you can crimp without the plastic piece, solder the wire inside the crimp, and heatshrink over it.
I disagree with you, solder is most definitely a strong mechanical connection. Perhaps you have never worked with copper piping? When connecting terminals via solder, I usually crimp the connection beforehand. You simply cannot beat the conductivity of silver based solder.
The ‘conductivity’ differences in these applications are negligible at best, check with an ohm meter yourself. In extreme conditions, there is no doubt that a PROPER crimp is more secure. Does anyone else on here own a proper set of crimps besides me?
I wire aircraft for a living and the methods that I posted are what you trust your life to each time you board an aircraft. If soldering terminals was a more secure method, it’d be required by the FAA. Sure, cut the insulation off and go over it with solder if you like, but it’s totally unnecessary. With that said, there are some instances where I will solder instead of crimp (wire to wire connections if a butt splice would be unsightly), however I trust my soldering abilities. Most solder joints that I run across done by other people are worse than my first attempt ever.
Solder is a great, conductive connection. I agree with phate, its not the most durable in a high vibration/movement environment. Its stiff and brittle and will fail sooner than a crimped only connection.
When I worked at Toyota the engineers told us to use crimp connections and quality shrink wrap for repairs rather than soldering.
a very simple example of a condition where you’d want a crimp rather than soldering: one of the wires that goes from the terminals of a subwoofer to the voice coil comes off. In any other situation, it’d just be “oh, i’ll solder that back on”. It’ll work for a bit, but the solder is nice and brittle, so it will fail eventually.
I picked some up a couple years ago, after killing many connectors brute forcing them with a cheap stripper/crimper.
Not to mention when your doing a lot of it, its not as stressful on your hands
I also have strippers that are similar to that crimper, ratcheting, and give you a nice strip every time :thumbup Also much better than the cheap plier type ones that can kill the wire
