66 C10 Rewire questions with American Autowire kit - 500560

[pdxhall]

I also bought the crimpers that the astronaut has. I was using this style but without the changeable jaws and found that the jaws were a little too large for what I really needed for my AAW kit. I also didn't do any soldering after reading the cons.

[roll_the_dice]

Originally Posted by pdxhall

I also bought the crimpers that the astronaut has. I was using this style but without the changeable jaws and found that the jaws were a little too large for what I really needed for my AAW kit. I also didn't do any soldering after reading the cons.

So you liked the ones from Amazon theastronaut recommended? I didn't solder any of mine either. I am finished with my truck, but need to send my friends crimpers back to him...and I have another truck to wire.

[pdxhall]

So far they are working fine.

[bigmoe]

Hmm. When it comes to joining wires I've been using solder and shrink tube for 30+ years on dozens of projects and have never had a problem. I keep the joins short and tight and heat just enough for the solder to penetrate without over heating it. Sometimes I double shrink tube or use waterproof types if the wire is exposed to the elements. I'll crimp terminal ends on but often I remove plastic sheathing and use shrink tube.

[msg]

Originally Posted by roll_the_dice

Hey MSG...did you buy the crimpers theastronaut recommended from Amazon? If so, did they do double crimps (for lights) as well as single? I have a single crimper and borrowed a double crimper from a friend, but want to have a good set of double crimpers for future wiring.

I did buy the Amazon crimpers and returned them after trying them out. I hated to do it cause it was half the price of the 2 I need from AAW and they offer way more crimp styles. The reason I returned was trying to crimp with them on the test connectors that AAW had in the kit was more difficult for me than the AAW ones.

The AAW approach is to crimp the 2 prongs individually like you see in the videos. The width of the AAW crimper head of the tool is about half the width of the Amazon tool allowing me to target one crimp at a time. The amazon kit is designed to have the exposed/stripped wire crimp and the sleeved wire crimp to lay on the tool and crimp at once, but to do that the tool designed so wide that some connectors were too tricky, in fact I mangled 2 of the male connectors that were in the test kit trying to make it work. I took a side by side of the tool heads which also showed the crimp barrel space is taller in the Amazon tool, the AAW is shorter which I would think makes for a tighter crimp. Ill attach the pic, the blue handle is the Amazon tool on the left. I thought I took a comparison pic of the straight on comparison of the jaws so you could have see the width of the heads but I didnt.

Im still trying to get to actually wire things up, hopefully tomorrow.

[nsb29]

Originally Posted by bigmoe

Hmm. When it comes to joining wires I've been using solder and shrink tube for 30+ years on dozens of projects and have never had a problem. I keep the joins short and tight and heat just enough for the solder to penetrate without over heating it. Sometimes I double shrink tube or use waterproof types if the wire is exposed to the elements. I'll crimp terminal ends on but often I remove plastic sheathing and use shrink tube.

Lol I have been doing it for almost twice that long I used to build Harley’s Soldering and heat shrinking and never had a problem and nothing vibrates more

[roll_the_dice]

Originally Posted by msg

I did buy the Amazon crimpers and returned them after trying them out. I hated to do it cause it was half the price of the 2 I need from AAW and they offer way more crimp styles. The reason I returned was trying to crimp with them on the test connectors that AAW had in the kit was more difficult for me than the AAW ones.

The AAW approach is to crimp the 2 prongs individually like you see in the videos. The width of the AAW crimper head of the tool is about half the width of the Amazon tool allowing me to target one crimp at a time. The amazon kit is designed to have the exposed/stripped wire crimp and the sleeved wire crimp to lay on the tool and crimp at once, but to do that the tool designed so wide that some connectors were too tricky, in fact I mangled 2 of the male connectors that were in the test kit trying to make it work. I took a side by side of the tool heads which also showed the crimp barrel space is taller in the Amazon tool, the AAW is shorter which I would think makes for a tighter crimp. Ill attach the pic, the blue handle is the Amazon tool on the left. I thought I took a comparison pic of the straight on comparison of the jaws so you could have see the width of the heads but I didnt.

Im still trying to get to actually wire things up, hopefully tomorrow.

Thanks the pictures shows perfectly what you are talking about. I will end up buying an AAW crimper....at least I only need 1.