Wiring terminals

[VintageTwin]

My supplier (Metric Man) for the greatest wire terminals on earth is out of business. They were metric terminals, but you could hog-out the ring terminals to fit on SAE terminal posts. The nice thing about the terminals were that two rear tangs gripped the wire's insulation and another two tangs gripped the wire strands. I'll post a pix of them . The thought of having to use blue-collar terminals that you crush with pliers is appalling. What a revolting development this turned out to be.

[PanPal]

Pull the blue insulator off, solder the terminal on the tinned wire and slide the heat shrink tube up to the ring. It looks good, but the OD of the ring doesn't look OEM. They don't work well on the ignition switch, but the red ones do.

[VintageTwin]

That sounds all right to me. I follow you on the blue collar removal. But I got lost on the red terminal. The red terminal jobs must be a smaller diameter ring for the ignition? Okay. I'll amble on over to the NAPA shop and check to see what they have in the way of three different size terminals. One size for the battery cables, one size for the terminal boards and then what....another size (red) for the ignition switch? I'll see what they have, make up some leads and post them on the photo site.
Thanks for the direction.

[kell]

Potential problem with soldering: the wire needs flexibility at the point it exits the crimp. Solder makes it inflexible, and vibration over time can weaken the wire at the exit point of the crimp.
Potential problem with a dry crimp: moisture, grease or battery acid invading and, in concert with vibration, weakening the mechanical bond.
If you solder, use it like Brylcreem -- a little dab'l do ya, just a spot inside the crimp to bond the wire to it, but not so much that it wicks up the wire.
Either way (with or without solder), use shrink tubing to keep the nasties out of your connection.

[VintageTwin]

Thank you. I will do exactly that.
I miss the Metric Man terminals, but I've got to get over it. NAPA had the blue collar termianls on the spin-rack. Cheap too, 3 bucks got me 20 of them. The red terminals have a wider ring. Too wide for my liking. I chose the blue terms. with a thin ring. The top of a #8 round-head screw just about covers the ring. The NAPA container lets you take them out of the box to test for fit. Thanks for the tip.

[countershaft]

VintageTwin
I do the same thing pulling off cover and small amount of solder to term. but before i slide heat shrink on I put a little di electric grease around end then slide heat shrink over geased connection makes me feel better bout moisture good luck

[VintageTwin]

Allright. I'll add the electric grease to the mix. Is that the aluminum wire de-oxidizer paste?? I know it is.....I KNOW it is. You know why I know?...................because I just threw a big tube of it away last week. But go ahead countershaft......don't sugarcoat it....tell me it's the aluminum wire de-oxidizer paste....I can take a hit!

Post by vintagetwin

We're not out yet. Metric Man is no more, but he may have sold out to another company.

[kell]

I think countershaft was talking about plain old dielectric grease like you would use on spark plug boots.

[VintageTwin]

Thanks. I'll go try and find some if the metric man terminals are gone for good. I'm waiting for a call-back from Nighsco about them right now.

Got 'em! They're back! I have 300 ring terminals on their way. Jobber for Nighsco is SoCal Imports. LA, CA (562) 633-9731. You want the ETL-1 (rachet) crimper tool, ECX-43 (9/64" about 5/32) and ECX-44 (14/64" about 1/4" for battery terminals) ring terminals. Affordable too. Go look at the pix on the forum.