Thread: Holy crimp connectors and wire nuts batman!

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Well I was working on my car installing the steering column and o my god the last guy LOVED crimp connectors dam near every wire has a crimp connector WTF!!! man i am a fan of soldering every wire and taping and finsh off with some srink tub


P.S and i found 3 wire nuts!!! and 2 of the crimp connectors failed and the wires fell out! GRRRR under the hood i had 2 wirs with 5 crimp connectors in a row

Yep, the guy that built my 32 ford used them everywhere! I am slowly working through them and replacing them with butt connectors, solder and shrink wrap.

BBM, even though you hate crimp connectors, consider yourself lucky, it could have been worse. Imagine the mess if the previous owner had tried the repairs with a pistol style soldering gun, used acid core solder or got the wires too hot, melted the wire insulation or connector housings, etc. Glad you found the mess and can fix it.

Mike

o man i love my pistol style soldering gun LOL but like u sade u need to make shure u dont get it to hot. and yes acid core solder would suck BAD!

Yup.... looks very much like all the wiring the previous owner(s) of my Firebird were fond of. Replaced it all last winter but I still have some strategically placed crimped spade and butt connectors for certain applications but a big fan of solder and heat-shrink. Not so much countless wire nuts and electrical tape

-Chris

I had a '47 International KB2 that the PO rewired the dash & lights with 12-18" lengths of wire & twisted the bare ends together only! no tape, nothing! I had to replace all the wiring.

Pat

Connectors?? Shoot I thought they were resistors, well if you get enough of them inline they act like resistors!!

if u look at the 1 it is starting to trun brown!

Once worked on a '78 (?) Caddy Seville, had no back lights. Found that the car had been clipped in it's lifetime, so the harness was suspect. I found the harness (GM used aluminum hard wires in those harnesses) cut in the middle, both ends stripped and inserted into rubber vacuum hiose so they butted, and taped so the wires wouldn't move. I think that's the worst wiring repair I've ever seen. Butt connectors would have been an inprovement.

While I agree from looking at your pictures that your wiring was pieced together badly, crimp terminals are not in-of-themselves a bad thing necessarily. I know some people feel much better because they solder every connection, but we use crimp terminals exclusively and have never had a problem, and there is a reason why we do it that way. Both my Son Dan and I came out of the marine industy, and the American Yacht and Boat Council, who dictate how things must be done in boat construction, insist that all wires have crimp terminals, not soldered. The reason is that soldering creates a hard/ brittle spot that can fracture from vibration.

The other reason they do not allow soldered connections is because it is possible to solder a connection and get a "cold" solder connection. It looks good on the surface, but wasn't heated correctly and a good bond wasn't created between the wire and connector. There is a fine line between not enough heat and too much heat.

The key is to not use wire and components that you pick up at the local Autozone type store, but to use high quality parts. I have always used Ancor brand, marine quality wire and terminal ends. Each strand within the wire is individually tinned, and the same coating process goes onto the crimped-on parts. They don't corrode, and the terminals we use have heat shrink built onto them, so that we simply hit them with a heat gun when done to effect a good seal from moisture. Another important item is to use a good quality crimp tool, the $ 5 ones you pickup are not the ones to use. Proper ones crimp very tight without cutting into the protective skin of the terminal end.

My '27 was wired that way 20 years ago and the wires have been wet a lot, as the electrics are all under the seat and got rained on often. Never had one wiring related problem, and when I cut the wiring out a few months ago to redo the entire car, everything still looked good and solid. I wired my current T the same way and am having the same result. Just thought I would offer another spin on the solder vs crimp discussion.

Don

yes "Itoleduso" i will agree when u get the good crip conters u will be fine. the truble is a lot of people dont how how to soder and they over heat the wire or dont heat it enuf.

by the way that box u have there looks NICE where did u get that fuse block??????

That fuse block was from one boat or another, don't remember what brand. I scored it at the last marina I worked at, and it looked perfect for what I wanted to do.

Don

problem we have up here with the crimp connections is corrosion. using road salt in the winter, every under hood crimp will corrode over time. what I always do is buy Buss crimp terminals, yank the jacket off them, normally I solder the connection and use shrink tubing, but if I don't do the solder. I at least use shrink tubing instead of the plastic jackets they come with..

I have a few crimp on connectors for my project wiring, but all are "tested by the YANK method" then shrink wrapped. This brings up another problem - quality of shrink wrap. Some that I have is just plain junk and wont do a tight seal. There is the shiny black wrap then there is the flat black wrap, that regardless of brand has been the best sealer.

Although not the best looking method of wiring, crimp terminals work ONLY when they are crimped using a proper crimp tool. IN the pictures, it appears that the terminals were crimped with amp pliers, which do not correctly collapse the barrel of the terminal to give maximum wire contact. Amp plier crimps are very prone to loosening up and failing. Proper crimp tools are not cheap but will last forever; I have a pair that I got in 1969 that still work perfectly.

mike in tucson