Thread: Bad Ast Astro Van Build

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Nice work & great pictures as usual, Mark. Just curious, why does the distribution block need to stand off of the surface? Seems it could just bolt directly to the surface.

Originally Posted by rspears

Nice work & great pictures as usual, Mark. Just curious, why does the distribution block need to stand off of the surface? Seems it could just bolt directly to the surface.

Hey Roger,
It didn't "need" to stand off the surface but there were already two holes in the firewall so I used them without having to weld one up or drill another hole. Plus I can use the bracket as a cable guide/retainer for routing to the other side.

As you know from the above posts, I was holding off crimping all of the big stuff until I ordered one of these hydraulic terminal crimpers off eBay last week.
http://images38.fotki.com/v266/photo...MVC006F-vi.jpg
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.
http://images116.fotki.com/v695/phot...MVC007F-vi.jpg
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.
http://images41.fotki.com/v209/photo...MVC010F-vi.jpg
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...
http://images115.fotki.com/v607/phot...MVC014F-vi.jpg
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