Thread: Harbor Freight/eBay Hydraulic Crimpers

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I posted this in my build thread but I know not everyone looks in there so I posted it here so more of you will see it... If you have any large cable wiring/crimping to do, these are worth the money...
I was holding off crimping all of the big stuff (4ga and 1/0) until I ordered one of these hydraulic terminal crimpers off eBay last week.

Harbor Freight sells this for 70 bucks. I got it for <55 dollars and free shipping...
I got it today and tried it out on a 1/0 cable terminal. I can say it worked very well and I am glad I waited to do these crimps until I got this tool...
Here is the lug I am going to crimp. As you can see this is pretty big. The tool comes with dies to do up to 2/0.

Excellent investment and it makes some nice looking crimps. I am going to look into hard mounting it to the bench. It gets kind of busy trying to hold the cable in place while trying to actuate the hand pump on the crimper.

I clamped the lug in the vise and tested the crimp. It will take a lot of force to pull the lug off...
I finished up the crimp with some heat shrink and called it good...

Of course I have at least a half dozen of these to do on the big cables and as many or more on the 4 ga. stuff. Should be fun now.
Mark

The right tool for the job sure makes it better and easier

That would be worth having, even if all I used it for was on my farm equip.

You will find that as soon as you have it hard mounted down that you will need it on a much larger bench/work table so you can get the vehicle up there to use it------------

What is really nice about those is that you can use them about anywhere the cables are and its hard to get a solid place with enough room for the heavy hammer ones up under a combine or a big piece of construction/mining equip

Excellent - in my line of work, these crimps are routinely used for grounding and bonding and are performed using tools from Klein and others that cost several thousand dollars!. Yours looks really good, Mark. I'm a firm believer in "right-tool-for-the-job" as it makes thing so much simpler. I use Harbor Freight for a lot of things like tie wraps, Velcro, rags, buffing wheels, etc. and some tools that I may just use once or twice. No where close to Snap-on or MAC in quality of price, but for limited use and for those of us who this is a hobby they seem to be just great.

Again, an excellent job!
Glenn

As I posted on your build thread, I really like this crimper a whole lot more than the hammer crimper that dimples the collar, and the price is great when you compare the two! As for mounting, seems to me that it would be pretty easy to rig a set of hold downs so a guy could clamp it to the bench top to make doing cables that have not been routed yet super easy, but being able to have it loose for those times when you need to put a new end on an existing cable, or you need to route the cable into place first and install the terminal end with the cable in place. Best of both!!

Being a gizmoholic I think one of these would be great to have. But how do you replace the visceral pleasure of swinging a bfh?

Thanks guys, the crimper works great and I came up with a mounting solution that should be acceptable for everyone.
I modified my crimper yesterday so it will easily clamp to the welding bench. Frees up a hand for holding the wire in place.
I marked out a pattern for a couple of drilled and tapped holes in the head.

I will be screwing it to this piece of 1/4" plate with a couple of drilled and counter bored holes.

I clamped the tool in the drill press vise and drilled two holes out to .149 for tapping for a #10-32 screw.

Here is the plate getting drilled and counter bored.

Test fit. Bolted up nice and was very sturdy. This will work great when I get to crimping all of the van cables...


Cleaned and painted the plate.

This will be good to go and, if I need it do any crimps in tight places, the plate will come right off.
Mark