Made-up battery cables?

For all marine wiring i dip the stripped wire in waterproof grease, slip on heat shrink, crimp then heat heat shrink tight which wicks the grease up the inside of the wire. If you have the tinned wire you could try R H Davey welding supplies to crimp the ends on, they have the crimps and most sizes of battery cable but would have to order in tinned. R H Davey are in quay side road southampton SO 18 1AD, they will do small jobs for coffee money if not to busy .
 
30boat said:
Most of the time we're only talking of hundreds not thousands of amps.
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Batteries in house banks are capable of supplying thousands of amps. Just had my analyzer on a bank of AGM Lifeline batts the other day that was delivering 2600 cranking amps at -18C...

I have personally seen the results of a vise crimped lug that departed from the wire, the bank was not fused and the fire was astounding, boat was a total loss. Here in the US electrical issues are the #1 cause of fires on boats. This is not a surprise to me as I've seen it all...:eek:

With the right tools and lugs the solder will not penetrate the crimp as it has nowhere to flow. I have actually submerged a properly crimped lug for over six months and found no water what so ever in the captive end. No water, no solder.

I have a boat I am re-wring right now that I simply tugged on the battery cable with about 10-15 pounds of force and the lug came off. Previous owner made them with a vise or large pliers. This particular wire should have been able to sustain over 900 pounds not 10-15 pounds. It's no wonder the wire jacket was partially burned and melted...

If you can find a pro to do it who has the right tools you'll be doing well..
 
30boat said:
It depends on the vice of course.Mine is a hefty Record that is capable of several tons of pressure.I know this is controversial but I always solder the joints after crimping.
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This is OK so long as you soften the joint with several layers of heatshrink about 50/75mm long.
 
Trundlebug said:
No need to buy expensive crimping tools, or pay someone else to do it and risk getting the lengths wrong.

I rewired all my charging system myself, achieving excellent crimps just by using a small anvil, a lump hammer and blunt cold chisel.

Two crimps on each connector, gave as tight a crimp as you're ever likely to get using a fancy machine.

For the smaller wires you can buy suitable crimping tools from Maplins.

Total cost for new tools for me was, er, £0.
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Having invested in a £30 hydraulic crimper to do a windlas installation where I needed a number of chunky custom cables, i was able for free to replace all the very poor connections made as you describe elsewhere in the boat. Over time such connections work and fail.
 
I was in the market for a new boat recently - the quality of the electrics and the approach taken by the owner often spoke volumes about how the boat had been cared for. Do it right and use a proper crimping tool (either yours or someone elses).
 
Moonfire said:
Do it right and use a proper crimping tool (either yours or someone elses).
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I had decided that long before starting this thread :-)

Unless anyone comes up with anything drastically better, which seems unlikely, I'm going to go with the "Wiring Project" folks linked in the first few posts.

Thanks,

Pete
 
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