Crimp connections

Wire Gland assortment. Keep in mind excessively thick walls. The gland squeezes the wire progressively tighter. AMAZON ---------Wire Gland

The Kelley had 4 4" conduit down the ?ongitudinals P & S

One could rig a strain-relief grip to go over the connection. Just something to ponder...

If insulation on the wire blisters, the wire has overheated. WithWith small wires I wait until the shiny plated terminal blushes and then apply just enough solder to plate the stranding.

Standoffs are mandatory to prevent wire and cable from dangling. For instance on the Kelley II I ordered the shipfitters to make stanchions 18" from the starter motor connection studs. Stainless steel Adel clamps were used w/ 1" capacity.

Bunching of multiple conductors into a harness helps but the harness should not be allowed to flop around. It too needs support. With a plywood and plastic RV dowels of various diameter and length can act as supports. A gob of GOOP can pin wires where a clamp cannot go.
strain relief can be taught an so can soldering. But for a few with limited aptitude soldering is difficult. At my late age I had to teach myself to solder 25AWG wire to 30AWG terminal pins. All 8 pins fit on a plastic HIROSE plug smaller than the toggle of a household light switch. The TIP of a toggle switch not the side!

Until a person does autopsy on a non-functioning hydraulically crimped battery lug with shrink tubing the hex crimped stranding looks impressive. But battery gasses are nasty especially hydrogen. Salt air is also nasty. QUICKCABLE offered a new line of lugs and terminals that were lead coated not tin plated. I don't see them any more.

What I do now is I have soldered everything on important jobs since the sixties. RAYCHEM the originator/inventor/patent holder of heat shrink tubing introduced HIM 3:1 shrink tubing in 1969. Armed with ERSIN MULICORE solder, 55 lbs worth, 13 miles of wire* 320 feet of shrink tubing and and four thousand terminals and lugs I did the Kelley II. It left the outfitting dock in July of 1983 and when I returned in 2010 I asked the new skipper if he knew of any electrical failures. "None except for relays and stuff that belonged to Faruno and Decca". The ORIGINAL battery cable and lugs were intact. I'll invite anyone to try and best a quarter century long lifespan failure free existence of any electrical system on a commercial fishing vessel. Few people would have the tenacity to stick with soldering and heat shrinking to that extreme. It took me 2-years. I proved a point to myself. That year (2010) I returned from Mexico with serious heart problems and was invited to stay and visit with friends.

*Four runs of 16 gauge 36 conductor wire was run 112' from wheel house to engine pods. A 12 ton gear reduction comealong and six people were needed to make the pull. That alone counted for 3/4 miles of wire. Two reduce resistance 1 gauge was required for house 24 volt power and 4 gauge for the 12-volt power and remember on a steel vessel ground had to return though isolation cabling.

Not to go too far off subject... Does anyone else find it fascinating that they use a particle accelerator in the production of heat shrink tubing?

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
I'll add this as a tip

There are times when added strain relief is desired for -any- electrical termination.

Use 3-1 heat shrink tubing over the joint.

Then slip on a 2nd piece of tubing over the first shrunken tubing but make it a bit shorter in length.

If it took several hundred 90 degree flexes to fatigue soldered or bare wire, you'll spend thousands of flexes before you give up trying to break a doubled application of heat shrink tubing. It simply will not break. Unlined heat shrink tubing is almost worthless.

Worried about the inherent strength of the wire itself? Select -Cross Link- insulated wire. As a bonus Cross Link Wire withstands higher temperature. As a negative it is difficult to find tinned Cross Link wire. DLO wire is much tougher but available solely in black.

correct. In many cases the failure mode of a crimped or soldered connection, (most often soldered connection) is not paying attention to strain relief during flexure, not failure of the intended solder joint in the connector.

And travel trailers are inheritantly subject to lots of vibration.

I worked at a company that designed high end T&M equipment and to MIL spec's. One thing we found is that soldered joint quality, no matter how much training and skill is highly dependent on the operator. And the most common failure wasn't a solder failure, it was using to MUCH solder, causing solder wicking down the conductor. then at the end of the solder, was a high stress concentration during flexure. Regardless of what strain relief we did. We did extensive testing using crimped connectors with built in strain relief. reliability was much better than soldered wire connection. Now this was with small ga. wire, not #00 cable. We also used calibrated crimpers, dedicated to each specific connector and wire size, that were tested and calibrated periodically by the Metrology group. A good crimped connection is a gas tight seal.

And big box stores seldom have a acceptable quality crimper even for small ga wire.

I almost always use a crimped connection. But the crimper was near $100 plus the cost of each of the specific jaws for each connector type.

For anything below #10 wire or so I use a hydraulic crimper.

And in almost all cases I top it off with the same scheme you have with choice of wires and heat shrink.

I'll add this as a tip

There are times when added strain relief is desired for -any- electrical termination.

Use 3-1 heat shrink tubing over the joint.

Then slip on a 2nd piece of tubing over the first shrunken tubing but make it a bit shorter in length.

If it took several hundred 90 degree flexes to fatigue soldered or bare wire, you'll spend thousands of flexes before you give up trying to break a doubled application of heat shrink tubing. It simply will not break. Unlined heat shrink tubing is almost worthless.

Worried about the inherent strength of the wire itself? Select -Cross Link- insulated wire. As a bonus Cross Link Wire withstands higher temperature. As a negative it is difficult to find tinned Cross Link wire. DLO wire is much tougher but available solely in black.

Silver soldering large cables...

• Rob a bank
• Find an unwitting seller in a garage sale
• Silver is not magic
• 4% silver in solder is almost undetectable resistance wise
• Pure silver would be used with gold plated terminals. Only aqua regia destructs gold. Gold laughs at battery acid
• Some of the space shuttle wire I got at the Lockheed auctions was gold plated
• Six wires six conductors each insulated with Dupont Kynar and unfriendly. Stiffer than hell.

GordonThree wrote:

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Problem with soldering lugs is that it can make the soldered joint brittle. With coach vibration, the wiring can break. That is the reason you don't find soldered connections in aircraft wiring.


HORSE


PUCKY


I've held an FAA PMA license for electrical systems and a second license for aircraft starter motor and alternator rebuilding for 29 years.

It's good to have you back on the forums :)

Thats good to know, I feel much better now about my silver-soldered copper lugs!!

FWIW, after 10 yrs they’ve never given me even a hint of a problem, and I have little doubt that they help reduce dreaded (D.C. low voltage) voltage losses than can commonly occur across cumulative electrical connectors.

3 tons

Can you share a technique for silver soldering a large wire and terminal?