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Which if these cable crimps would consider a well done crimp. Now course I had add the insulation sleeve yet which seals the connection.

Also here one that was over crimped that actually fused all the copper wire strands into one solid part.


Plus customer didnt even use correct size cable lug as he used a 4 ga lug on a 8 ga cable.

I don’t crimp at all. I’ve found that using the correct size lug and then clean, flux and solder the connections works best for me.

Crimping just saves me from damaging the insulation here. But curious to what you use to generate enough heat to properly solder the connection and are you using acid or rosin flux?

Nearly all my battery electrical connections are done crimped terminals then sealed with heat shrink and a dielectric paste to prevent water and acid seeping into them. The ones that don't get the treatment are the AMP, Molex and Delphi terminals which uses an open barrel crimp.

Something I have notice is all 6 ga cables are not the same size as some I can slip on 8 ga cable lug. Probably Chinese made cables. Also with the crimper I have I need to use the 4ga dies with the heavy cable lugs I have or I get over crimped lugs. So for the 6 ga that takes 8ga lug I use the 6 or 7 ga dies, most time it is the 6 ga die.

I use solid core solder used by plumbers. My dad was a pipe fitter and I started soldering copper pipe when I was 10. What I do is clean the inside of the lug with emery cloth, fill the lug with flux paste, heat the lug with a propane torch until it is liquid then stick the clean cable into the lug. After removing the cable I now have a clean lug and cable ready for soldering. Reheat the lug and fill with melting solder, and immediately stick the cable in and allow it to cool and harden. Done. This way I’m only getting a very small amount of melting on the insulation and have a solid clean connection. To my knowledge I’ve never had one fail.

Ah an area that I getting away from. I am trying to be environmentally friendly here but I do know the method but I tend to sweat the joints and let flux draw in the solder. I currently using 63/37 mix. The old way just puts more lead and CO2 in to the environment. The hydraulic puts out only the CO2 I breathe out besides half the time I out Propane anyway.

I really doubt that I’ve had any registered effect on the environment over the last 50 years doing it this way. One badly tuned push mower, used one season, is probably worse for the environment than all the lugs I’ve soldered.

StarTech said:

Also here one that was over crimped that actually fused all the copper wire strands into one solid part.

Click to expand...

That is what you are looking for. A good crimp turns the copper strands into a copper block if you will. Best is a hydraulic crimp tool.

Far as soldering goes, if you had a corroded connector drawing excessive amperage, that will heat up. Could get hot enough to melt some solder. Course that would be an extreme condition with a much larger starter than mowers use. Probably be fine to solder a mower battery lug. Still prefer to crimp battery connectors.

slomo

slomo said:

That is what you are looking for. A good crimp turns the copper strands into a copper block if you will. Best is a hydraulic crimp tool.

Far as soldering goes, if you had a corroded connector drawing excessive amperage, that will heat up. Could get hot enough to melt some solder. Course that would be an extreme condition with a much larger starter than mowers use. Probably be fine to solder a mower battery lug. Still prefer to crimp battery connectors.

slomo

Click to expand...

If it gets hot enough to melt the solder then the insulation has already melted & started to burn and the battery has probably exploded.
Now if it was a 200A alternator feed ten things might be different but mowers are lucky if they manage to push out the rated 20 Amps.

FWIW
I crimp with a hex crimper then paint over with liquid electrical tape then cover the joint with 2 layers of heat shrink, the final one being a glued version.

Very little melting of the insulation, because I’m not heating the cable until I insert it into the lug. Because I’ve clean and fluxed both lug and cable, capillary action makes the cable solid and fuses it to the lug. Had a guy question my results so I showed him how I did it, then cut a cross section through lug and cable. Looked like individual wires surrounded by silver insulation in a copper sleeve. Yes, you must insert the cable in quickly as the cable cools the solder very fast.

i use a handheld battery cable crimper, i always clean the wire up good, my small dremel with an aluminum wire wheel on it works good, i then dielectric grease it, crimp it, and heat shrink over the whole sha-bang. and sometimes cleanly wrapped electrical tape over the heat shrink.

I knew there was more than one way to get a rock solid good connection. For me it was just that the hydraulic crimper works best for me as I do lot more just lawn mower battery cables like my household 0000 cables that can have up to 200 amps going through or my truck battery cables that have at least 600+ amps going through them when I starting the motor.

The main point was don't do a poor job of fixing the cables like my example of what the customer did to keep from carrying his cable to get it fixed but ended up in my shop anyways because it failed.

ahhhhhh to crimp? or not to crimp? what is the answer....what works best for the application...my not so humble nor honest opinion!
Love the blog! I have learned so much since joining You guys know yer stuff!
Thanks!

I use this:
But, solder is great too but, only use rosin core for electrical connections, any other flux will be acid based and can cause corrosion in the future.

I always put on the Shrink Sleeve FIRST! Usually Crimp/Solder then cover with Permatex Aircraft Gasket cement, allow to dry and then shrink on Insulation sleeve after trimming any burnt wire insulation. There are many ways to do this.

StarTech said:

Ah an area that I getting away from. I am trying to be environmentally friendly here but I do know the method but I tend to sweat the joints and let flux draw in the solder. I currently using 63/37 mix. The old way just puts more lead and CO2 in to the environment. The hydraulic puts out only the CO2 I breathe out besides half the time I out Propane anyway.

Click to expand...

ACDC huh?

As far as the pictures, I will do the properly crimped with solder. I use regular rosin core solder. After the crimp I clamp the hole end of the connector in the vise and heat with a propane torch. The solder flows in nicely and make the connection liquid tight, so don't have a problem with corrosion. Then hit it with a little dielectric grease and then heat shrink. Heating the connector with the torch does little to damage the insulation. The heat shrink will cover it anyway.

Sometimes I use a larger connector and get the over crimp. Then solder and go from there. I am not going to run around town looking for the correct solder lug. (that probably nobody has.) 8 ga wire with a 1/2" hole etc. The little yellow connectors that have them are so flimsy I would not use them.

So far I have not seen the ones I fixed every fail.

northcreeek262 said:

I use this:View attachment 57614
But, solder is great too but, only use rosin core for electrical connections, any other flux will be acid based and can cause corrosion in the future.

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The harbor freight special... I use that too. Works well. Only thing, they have dies for down to 16 or so gauge wire, but not really large dies. Wish they had dies for 0000 wire. I was always thinking of grinding the odd ball small ones to the size I want, but never got to it. The ones you show on the far left look larger than what came with mine.

Just strip the wire and crimp it between 2 washers when you bolt it on.

StarTech said:

Ah an area that I getting away from. I am trying to be environmentally friendly here but I do know the method but I tend to sweat the joints and let flux draw in the solder. I currently using 63/37 mix. The old way just puts more lead and CO2 in to the environment. The hydraulic puts out only the CO2 I breathe out besides half the time I out Propane anyway.

Click to expand...

I prefer soldering my electrical connections because it just makes for a better connection. My thoughts about using Pb alloy solder are, any environmental consequences has already been done in the mining, refining, and manufacture (like E-vehicles, huh?) Besides, there is lead-free electrical solder as well.

Lead metal poses no more environmental hazard than any other metal
You can eat it.
Goes in one end and 100% comes out the other
Undergraduate experiment done 1000's or times till ethics committees put an end to it
Only 5 common metals can be injested and come out 100%.
Lead oxides, different story

Oh great now you done it . Every idiot is going to eat lead. Well sorta and it still kills a lot of them rather quickly every day. About 54 lives per day lately here in the USA.

I did it .
And silver , tin , nickle , aluminium & paladium
We split the metals amongst the class, all swallowed a pea sized ball then recovered it ( messy) washed & dried them to a constant weight then comparred the before & after weights.
Nickle & aluminium both were a lot lighter , silver just barely measurable , lead & tin were the same weight down to 0.01g

And those that use aluminum cookware ingest aluminum every time eat meals prepare in them. This why most my pans are either cast iron or steel steel. I seen how my aluminum pans were being eaten away by foods. A lot old antiperspirant was aluminum based too.

bertsmobile1 said:

Lead metal poses no more environmental hazard than any other metal
You can eat it.

Click to expand...

A few years ago... Well maybe a decade. They were banning kid's ride on toys. Because of the lead in the battery terminals. It was considered a lead hazard. Go figure. If the kids are going to chew on battery terminals...

The history of the demonization of lead.
During the fuel crisis Europe wanted to use the local oil for fuel rather than middle eastern oil.
The local oils are not suitable for making petrol with
So rather than spending a fortune cleaning the locally distilled petrol at the refinery they made the customer do it in their exhaust and pretended it was to "clean the air"
The US followed suit shortly after as it pushed the price of fuel up with out increasing the pump price thus increasing the profitability of all of the USA oil companies.
Now lead is a neuro toxin, but no where near as powerful as copper , but no talk about banning copper is there , and if you think about it IUD's are all copper to kill the sperm & any developing fetus & the eggs themselves. We use copper based insectcides to kill a lot of agricultural pests .
Now because the media are pig ignorant about science but very well versed in creating panic , they latched onto lead and worked up fear of lead to a manical frienzy level.
Thus now any time any one says lead, every one thinks " nasty poison ".
Lead in petrol never was a health problem unless you swam in petrol , drank gallons of it or sniffed it for months on end.
Once it has passed through the engine there is no way your body can adsorb it, basic laws of entrophy.
What is dangerous is lead oxides, all 3 of them which were used extensively as fillers & UV adsorbers / barriers .
We are all familiar with red lead paint, and some would be familiar with white lead , most auto undercoats had lead oxide in them.
And that is where most enviromental lead came from prior to the ban.
Now the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, significant amounts of leadcarbonate are entering from lead roofing products being dissolved by weak carbonic acid rain .

Next who is at risk ?

Every one under about 25 by which time most brains are fully developed as the biggest problem is brain damage.
After that the problem is oxygen depletion because lead IONS attach to the oxygen atoms in your blood so adults suffer from annemia and the solution is to remove them from the leadded environment where they will make a 100% recovery.
I used to work in the lead industry.
One of my jobs was the biological monitoring of lead in our lead workers so I am very familiar with the TRUTH which is a long way from what the public is told.
Lead will accumulate in both the livers & kidneys where it usually does no damage and can be removed by medications ( not pleasant ) .
Zinc on the other hand is fatal as a metal as an oxide as a sulfate/ sulphide as a chlorate/chloride & as a carbonate.
Zinc also accumulates in both the liver & kidney where it will cause kidney failure and can not be treated any way other than removal of the kidney .
Welders & galvanizers will all be familiar with the warnings about "Zinc Fume Fever"
But we don't see people screaming for the banning of zinc plate or galvanized steel

Correct battery lugs with proper sized solder pellets. Been using them for years. https://www.batterycablesusa.com/solder-pellets-slugs

Only in America ?

bertsmobile1 said:

Lead in petrol never was a health problem unless you swam in petrol , drank gallons of it or sniffed it for months on end.

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Bert, That was the problem. In large cities we were sitting traffic jams sniffing the fumes for hours on end every day. Even today we can still find huge amounts of lead along roadsides. Another thing that was ban was lead used to seal our metal cans used for food storage.

All lead produces oxides when long exposure to the elements occur.

The problem is that all these metals and other items are cumulative over long term. One of labs for the effect on life out there is our oceans and those animals and plants are beginning show the results now. Like fish with micro plastics and mercury. There is so much waste in our environment now it isn't funny. What worst is we are the abomination to nature. IF everyone would actual do their part we and nature would better off.

People thinks oh it is just one candy wrapper but what are not thinking is the millions of them being being thrown out in the environment instead of being at least put in a garbage can. Or it just one tee shirt plastic bag that blew out of the vehicle yet they seen thousands of them on their drive back from the store. Some of our wildlife dies unnecessarily every day because of one these bags.I know that I had to rescue several animals myself over the years.

Landfills contains lots toxic metals. One of lead sources were the old CRT which are still be used but finally being phased out by the consumer. The backs of them were coated with lead to eliminate the x-ray hazards. Another source of consumer lead pollution is out electronics.

I think toxic metal build up in our body is part of the problem causing dementia and other mental problems. But we are constantly swallowing poisons every day called medicine. Personally I avoid as much as I can. Recently my doctor wanted to switch my blood pressure meds but said right off that I had to take monthly tests to check my kidney functions. Needless to say I not taking those meds. I do have it under control at 130-140 / 85-95 which a lot better than the over 250/120 that put me in the horsepital with my whole left side shutting down.

Sitting in traffic would only be a problem from sniffing unburned fuel as far as lead goes & you would have to sniff a lot of it.
Nitrogen oxides is what makes you sick in heavy traffic and on still days, straight lack of oxygen &/or CO & CO2 posioning
On a still day the O2 content of air can drop down to levels low enough to render people unconscious
Once the lead has been through you engine what comes out of the tailpipe is totally inert.
IT is also very hot so rises up into the air,and can travel for miles..
The lead on the side of the road is from paint dust and from tires.
All of the tests are fudged because they are only testing for lead and not what compound the lead is in or it's valence state.
So I can pass the dust through an Acetylene - Nitrous flame and get a lead reading but that lead can never be adsorbed by your body.
You test for lead posioning by doing urine & stool analysis because the body is removing the lead all by itself.
You screen for lead posioning by doing hemaglobens which will go down as the lead binds the oxygen in your blood.
After that it is a urinary ALA then if that looks bad a full chemical blood analysis.

You get more lead from cheap Chinese & Mexican pottery than you would ever have gotten from the tetra-ethyl lead used in fuels .
Lead solder used to seal cans firstly does not get to the food, secondly does not dissolve into the food & thirdly would go strait through the body if it did.
The only environmental risk would be to the cannery workers breathing the fume off the lead on very old lines where molten lead is used.
Th more modern plants put a ribbon of lead between the top & side then rolls them together twice, the heat from this is generally enough to melt the solder .
They dug up some lead lined cans of beef from Napoleons venture into Russia in 1975 and to every ones surprise the beef was still quite editable .
OTOH the supposedly "safe" lead free solder used in modern cans can not make the same long term seal and canned foods go off very quickly, particularly canned fruits where the juices are quite acidic, so people are posioned on a daily basis from the new "safe" cans because they leak .
Your gut is hydrochloric acid and prior to the invention of fiberglass , bulk hydrochloric acid was shipped in lead lined steel containers because lead is totally insoluable in hydrochloric acid .
As mentioned previously lead is soluable in carbonic acid formed by rain passing through CO2 but you would have to drink 1,000,000 gallons to get a dose that may cause problems.
It only takes about 2 weeks for a badly leaded furnace man with a hemogloben of 5 to recover from lead exposure and get back into the teens .

The lead oxides are tough and really not simple acid soluable remember they do not dissolve in battery acid either . You use nitric acid or better still aqua rega to dissolve lead .
How many times have you needed to scrape a battery terminal to get a good electrical connection because the surface had oxadised ?
Some oxides are tough and bound very strong, like lead & stainless steel which we are all familiar with.
Others are quite loose, adsorb water and flake off like red rust Fe203 or white aluminium oxide Al2 O3 -6H20
Mill scale ( FeO ) is formed at a much higher temperature than rust Fe203 and is tough and not water soluable
It is all about the entropy ( energy used in to formation ) and basically if you put a lot of energy in to make a stable compound then it takes more energy to break it down.

All metal oxides are posionous, electrical & thermal insulators & abrasive.
Take too many antacid tablets ( MgO ) and you are in for a stomach pump yet a couple will settle a bloated stomach quite happily.

IT is all about the valence state of the metal ions and the strength of the bonds
Chromium 1 & 2 are fine but Cr6 is fatal in trace amounts

bertsmobile1 said:

Only in America ?

Click to expand...

....With Larry the Cable guy

Oh well I still prefer my leaded coffee vs the unleaded version.

I do have a problem with processed sugar. I can only use cane sugar as the sugar beet version throw me in acid overload. I take a tablespoon full of white vinegar to settle my stomach. Yes I know it is an acid too but it does neutralize the stomach's acid to a point so I don't need those anti acid tabs. But it does burns going down.

See Star, this is the power of the media
If an intelligent person such as you, who is technically savvy can be totally mislead , what chance does the average Joe have who did almost no science in high school ?
Had I not done the 5 years with Unitest I would have been just as ignorant as the next person
And had I not been in charge of the biological monitoring of the workforce I would have been as easy to brainwash as the next person
I used to monitor the workers for Pb,Zn,Cd, Sb & Cu poisoning so had to be conversant with the symptoms , sources & consequences.

Lead was misrepresented as being the reason why there were air quality problems and those air quality problems were then attributed to development problems in children .
While it was true because it COULD have happened in reality the actual source of the lead was mostly paint.

Since then all sorts of professional lie tellers have been graphing health against lead in petrol, ignoring all sorts of other things like the shift from solvent based enamel paints to acrylics
The shift from lead oxide to zinc oxide & titanium oxide as pigments
The shift away from chromium tanned leather.

Just about every building over 3 stories uses copper water pipes that are soldered together.
Most farms on tank water used galvanised steel tanks that were soldered & riveted together before plastic tanks became available and that water often came off galvanised iron roofing using lead flashing and collected in soldered guttering.

WWII caused an explosion in chemical analysis development, away from wet chemistry to spectrual chemistry through to things like atomic vibrational chemistry ( magnetic resonance ) .
So chemists suddenly had very fast , very accurate and unbelievably sensitive tools.
Then we started to find things we did not know were there because the new tools could find very low concentrations .
A prime example of this what the Cryptosporidium & Giardia fisco Sydney in the 90's
Prior to the installation of the new computerised analysis of Sydney's tap water we ran every drop through a fish tank with some Macquarrie Bass in them.
Now this fish is one of the most sensitive to water quality and if the fish suddenly looked crook they turned the valves off & did a chemical & biological analysis of the water.
The new system was way too sensitive and suddenly showed the actual amount of Crypto & Giardia that was in the water so the water department went into a panic & shut off the water
Health alerts were issued every hour for days , bottled water issued to all resturants & food processors , households told to boil all water etc etc etc.
Then some of the sacked ( because the new machine made them redundant ) chemists were re-employed and the first thing they did was to bring some bass down from Newcastle & put them in the water.
And wadda you know, the fish were quite happy.
So they brought water from every catchment & dam in and ran it through the machine which condemed them all as being unsafe yet none of the towns & cities that were drinking this water showed no increase in sickness.
However individual testing by real people all showed the water to be perfectly safe .
Now to the cruxt of this little diversion
Thousands of residents suddenly came down with food posioning and all the experts attributed this to Crypto & Giardia in the water because they now knew it was there.
And this is exactly what happened to lead , everything that could be attributed to lead posioning was deemed to be derived from the lead in the petrol despite the fact it is impossible for a body to process it after it comes out of the tailpipe .

First I didn't say all lead came from gasoline. It is everywhere. Some water system use cleaning agents that actually release the lead oxides. Chlorine can be just as deadly to some animals. I used to have a Copper Banded Butterfly fish that was quite happy in the salt water derived from well water but did even survive having 1 gallon city tap water added to 75 gallon tank. One expensive lost because my mother would not listen to me about the chlorine.

It just like anyone seems to blame ethanol in our fuels for all carburetor problems which is not true either.

If people seen the junk that come out the public water systems when they are flushed they would not drink it ever again. Yes public water is available here but as long as I have a well I will not switch myself. BTW I just flushed my well tank as I was replacing the control relay and got nothing out of the glass lined tank.; not even any sediment. The relay was damaged from freezing and finally got down to where the pressure had to drop to zero before it would switch on. The new controller is operating between 50 and 70 psi.

And please I don't want to have food poisoning again. I done had 5+ times. A couple time while traveling and at least three times in the last five year from grocery store brought foods. Two times I nearly died because of it. Least now I can recognized the symptoms early enough to head it off. Boy I hate it when the room is spinning and I cant even walk, have to crawl to get somewhere to throw up my stomach contents. One time I had just lay in it as I passed out.

I also looked up the Cryptosporidium & Giardia item and found them to be parasites and not toxic metals. This I don't drink river water because of the parasites in it; although, I will drink most spring water if got at the source. Parasitic infection is not the same as food poisoning; although, the symptoms can be similar; although, what I have read it more like my lactose introlate condition where I drink a glass and within four hours be going over a 10 rail fence in the bathroom if you get my hint. Another term the low squats and high trots.

I think you have got what I am tying to say
And yes it is just the same as ethanol in fuel and unfortuneately CO2 with climate change.
CO2 is just one tiny part of the equation but by now 99% of the general population believe that if they buy a battery car & use solar electricity everything will go back to how it was.
The idea that we have to abandon big cities and disperse populations plus replant vast acreages of forest is not on their radar and limiting population growth only makes sense to those who keep fish as pets .

Until we change and start caring about more than just our little micro world; otherwords, not be so self centered nothing will change for the better. It doesn't matter how much I do to help things if two are following me make a mess.

It like me fixing all the oil leaks I find and then have a customer pull up with a tractor that leaking so bad the engine is covered in liquid oil, dripping all over my parking lot. Everything I did just went out the door as he is polluting more than I stop on my end.