81CT - Good video! I was sure it was one I'd seen already, but it wasn't. So, there's another one out there that covers these crimpers. And, it comes to the same conclusion - beautiful crimps. So, mine will be on order soon as well, but please post when you get yours and tell us what you think of them.

 

I'm late to the party but I crimp and solder. For larger acble I use HD lugs with solder slugs in them. I use a hammer crimper in my press, preload the terminal and slug, insert cable while applying heat when it starts to melt keep pressing. Then remove crimper, put lug+cable in vise, slather cable with Permatex liquid electric tape and apply uber heavy duty heat shrink.

Maybe overkill, but it's a darn tight crimp, soldered too, and sealed for good measure.

Preferred lugs: Heavy-Duty Copper Lugs - 5/16&#34 Stud
Cheapy crimper:
Down to 6ga or so I use tinned copper lugs in the same crimper and fill the lug with solder. Smaller wire gets terminals crimped with my ratcheting crimper and no solder. Liquid tape and heat shrink depending on where it is and how motivated I am.

My truck... Don't mind the mess, still have more wiring to tidy up.

 

These crimps are not only beautiful, but look as though they are near perfect.

 

Cadunkle - Thanks for the info. I'll follow up on the links.

Brandon - I agree. Beautiful crimps, and that's what I'm hoping to create.

 

Be prepared for me to be bringing my stuff up to crimp.

 

Had expected that. What good are tools if you don't share? In fact, this might be one thing we do at the next GTG.

 

When and where do we discuss wire (type, gauge, color and sources)?

 

We can do that here if you'd like. For sizes, we don't have all that many decisions to make. At least I don't think we do. Here's what I can think of:

• Battery cables: I'm not sure here
• Grounds:
  • Engine to cab: This has to be very flexible, so a strap like Jim mentioned is good. But, if the battery is grounded to the fender and the fender to the cab, this ground won't need to be more than a #10.
  • Battery to fender: This may turn out to be a major ground path, so maybe a #8?
  • Fender to radiator support: The radiator support just runs the headlights and turn signals. So, I'll probably run a short piece of #10.
  • Fender to cab: I'll probably ground the fenders to the cab as well as the engine to the cab. Maybe #10?
• Headlight: Probably #12 to each headlight, although #14 is adequate
• Alternator to megafuse: As said, I'm thinking #2
• Megafuse to solenoid/battery - depending on whether or not you use a solenoid: #2

I believe the rest of the wiring will be essentially stock wiring, with mod's. So, no change in wire size nor color.

Source? Suggestions?

 

That Great Lakes Skipper site has some by the foot marine grade wire in all sizes and the colors seem to be red, black and yella. They changed their navigation menu around and it is a little harder to search for, but still seem to have a lot of options.

I dont know if we can find it cheaper or not someplace. I have a buddy in NO that owns an electrical supply house. However, that stuff is for building and not automotive or marine.

 

Ground Strap Copper Flat 8 Braid

 

Gary, FWIW, the later trucks (1992-96/7) use a two part negative cable setup. The engine ground goes to the lower starter bolt which is changed to a bolt with a stud like the ones on exhaust, intake or water pump bolts where additional bracket or heat shield is attached. Where the old negative cable used to go from the battery, to the frame and then the engine block on the lower right side there is a short #4 cable to the frame attachment point.

The #8 or #10 wire from the back of the left head to the wiper motor bolt is still used, but the negative cable now has a pigtail like GM and Chrysler used for years that attaches to the inner side right front fender ground point. There is a healthy group there, another ground stud on the radiator support left side and a smaller one left front fender top rear. The front ones are where the lights ground along with some of the in-cab items. G100 is the LH front of radiator support and it is now what the in cab ground point used to be, everything except the right front lights including the engine and transmission electrical components go there with #8 wire. G101 is the right side on fender apron, and is right front lights along with the PCM grounds unlike the 85-86 system with a added on PCM ground. G103 is the engine ground to the battery, G104 is ICM, a single case ground for the PCM and underhood light. Inside the cab, the dash harness (now a completely separate harness) is grounded to the lower cowl (kick panel) on both sides with a bundle, main wires being #8 power windows and locks are grounded there also and still use a dedicated harness of their own. Rear harness is also grounded at the rear of the frame for marker, clearance and trailer tow.

Basically it seems Ford learned that more and better grounds were needed, probably driven by the increased number of electronics. I do not have the weak headlights that plagued the 1980-1986 models since I upgraded to the 1996 harnesses.

G101 is visible just above the battery, this is before I added the pigtail to the battery. I can get you a shot of G100 which is the big one on the left of the radiator support. The only body to body ground is flex cable on the right rear of the hood to the firewall for noise suppression for the radio.

 

Brandon - That looks like what we need. Thanks.

Bill - Interesting. Ford does seem to have significantly upgraded the ground system. Wow, the size of the ground to the fender is huge - much bigger than I would have expected. So, all of the in-cab grounds run to there?

I think the grounds for the 80-86 trucks, meaning the number of grounding points, was poor I don't think I need to make sweeping changes like Ford did. I'm hoping that just bonding all of the body panels together with jumpers and ensuring that the existing ground connections are good will be adequate.

However, I understand why Ford made some of those changes. For instance, having the ground from the battery go directly to the starter and then to the frame puts the high-current device on a solid ground. That prevents a poor connection at the frame of raising the ground voltage for all of the other devices during cranking, which could cause serious problems for a computer.

 

West Marine is a good source of marine grade wire/cable in a variety of colors, both by the spool and by the foot. Or you can just google "marine wire".

When sizing replacement wiring keep in mind that vehicle manufactures are always looking to shave pennies off the cost and a few pennies here and there across the whole build can be a fairly significant total. So they usually size wiring with little leeway for less than ideal conditions/age.

 

Thanks, Tom. Yes, that's my point about the original wiring. In fact, it is a perfect fit into the "conversation" that Chris and I are currently having on Dad's Alternator Dilemma. Ford cut the corner so closely on some of the wiring that it is now causing problems. An example is the headlight wiring.

So, I'll probably go back with at least one size larger than the factory, if not two sizes. Or, if I happen to have several sizes larger laying around and can make it fit I may use that. I'm not cutting the corners and a few pennies here or there won't make enough difference for me to worry about.

 

Since I got the crimper a couple of days sooner than I thought, it's REVIEW TIME!!

I really need new cables on my '86 and will be using this crimper for other vehicles too.

Here's the terminals I'm using:





The ring terminals I just got from the local hardware store and the battery terminals (tin plated copper) I got from Waytek Wire.

The almighty crimper:





First glance, it's about what you'd expect from any China tool. Maybe it'll last, maybe it won't, we'll see. Time will tell.

Since this model come with the metric dies, selecting the right one was a bit of a challange. I went online and got a conversion chart to see what I needed to use. The chart said for 2 AWG the conversion was 33.6mm2. (I don't have a little squared icon, so that'll have to do). Decided to use the 35mm2 dies as they were the closest. Here's the result from that:





Even though I went bigger, it was still too small. I couldn't complete the crimp because the terminal grew "ears" that got in the way. I turned the terminal 1/6th of a turn and gave it another shot. Not the prettiest, but it should work for now.

On to the battery terminal:





On this one, I used the 70mm2 dies. I didn't think it was going to work when I put the terminal in the dies to hold it as the dies seemed too small. Seemed to work rather well after all. These terminals show TWO crimping spots, so that's what I did. Am I happy with it? I think so. The crimps are extremely tight and look good. The largest wire this unit will do is 2AWG in a battery terminal as shown.

As for the way the ring terminal looks, I'm going to try to locate a set of AWG dies that fit this crimper. If nothing is found, I will resize the dies to work.

Overall, the crimper does work, and I feel with the correct set of dies, it will work beautifully. It really doesn't take a whole lot of pressure on the handles to make a complete crimp. I thought the battery terminal would be really hard to crimp, but was pleased to find out it went without any pain. Another thing, If you turn the terminal to hit it again, make sure the dies are parallel with each other. When I re-hit the ring terminal, the dies were not parallel and the crimper was making this really terrible cracking sound and would not complete the crimp. I'm guessing the dies were binding in their grooves. I bought this crimper off of eBay for $34.50 with free shipping. Was it worth it? I'd say so.

BTW, I can not find the adhesive-lined heat shrink I have, so didn't post a fully completed pic of the cable I just did. Must be loosing my mind as I know where I put it, but it's not there.