Making a strong, water-proof electrical connection
Just about everyone who works on cars and bikes hates electrical stuff, but you have to do it. I have grown to hate the common insulated crimp-on connectors. Firstly, they let water in and become corroded. Next, they are really just flattened or squished by the crimping tool, this allows the wire to wiggle side to side and eventually come loose. And lastly, they just look terrible. So, here’s what I do (I be glad to hear of other suggestions). I use non-insulated connectors (below, bottom) or if I can’t find them, I will cut the insulation off of the insulated type (top).
Not all of the common crimping pliers are made to do the non-insulated ends, mine have it on the handle side of the joint. Make sure you put the split side of the connector toward the half-round mandrel of the crimp tool.
Now, that wire is not going to pull out.
Next I use heat-shrink tubing to insulate and provide strain-relief. If you can find it, they make heat shrink tubing that is coated internally with hot-melt glue, this will help keep moisture out. I then give it a coating of liquid electrical tape (may be called brush-on electrial tape). I beleive it’s just plastisol (the stuff they use to dip-coat plier handles).
If your connection will show (and you care), the liquid electrical tape is available in different colors (nice for battery terminals if your cable is black, you can use it to mark the positive red).
Nice. what I’ve been doing is pulling the insulator off (one needle nose on the connector, one needle nose on the insulator), sub-par crimping, followed up by soldering the wire to the connector, then heatshrink.
Comment by Rick — July 17, 2006 @ 12:42 pm