Pro-Amateur Shade Tree Mechanic Tip of the Week

If you’re looking for heat shrink terminals to redo wiring on your boat, and you cringe at the sight of $30 packs of them at West Marine or $12 packs of them at Wal-Mart, then I have a solution for you.

Harbor Freight Tools.

Waterproof heat shrink connectors- spade, ring, butt splicing, etc.

Butt connectors in the red, blue or yellow sizes are $1.99 for 10 packs.

They’ve also got a good bit of heat shrink tubing, but it isn’t adhesive lined. Makes for good abrasion protection though.

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Luke 8:22-25

Extra extra pro tip*

A dab of pvc pipe glue on the wire turns the non adhesive lined heat shrink tubing into adhesive lined heat shrink tubing, dab some on wire and connector, slide heat shrink tubing over,spin a time or two to distrubute, wipe excess, heat to shrink. Stinks a bit when heating, but works great at a lot less cost or when adhesive lined is not available.

Russ B.
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God is great, Beer is good, People are crazy

Great tips guys. Man I could have saved a ton of mone over the years knowing those tricks.

I have been filling my crimp connectors with 5200 before inserting the wire. Keeps out the salt water that can corrode the wire from the inside. Seems to work so far. Sometimes I add heat shrink to the outside for added protection, depends on the wire and location.

I would strongly advise not buying the chepo crimp connectors from harbour freight. Go ahead and spend the extra few dollars and get quality connectors. Just cause they look exactly like the better quality connectors doesn’t mean they will carry the current.
I have lots of Infrared pictures that prove this point. I conduct Thermal-image scans of all our Electrical equipment and have seen way too many cheap crimped connectors fail or cause problems because of high resistance.

I bought some wire and connectors from www.gregsmarinewiresupply.com and was very happy with the price and quality.

RDW,
For 5 or 10 amp max (fused) circuits, you don’t think these things will carry the current?

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Can’t say for sure that they will or won’t.
All I know is this…We had an HVAC service contractor that was constantly using Cheap connectors and this is the result. I see it all the time. The connector will begin to corrode from the inside-out and cause a high resistance connection. Most of these “cheap” connectors come from China and we all know they don’t have the worlds best quality control, who the heck knows what metals they are acutally using. My opinion would be that if it will happen even at 1 amp eventually. At lower currents the temp will not rise as much but it still won’t pass the current once the oxidation sets in. Here is the main question…Do you want to be out there and all of a sudden your GPS starts to go on the blink cause you saved $10 on a bag of 50 forked terminals? What about that high powered Lowrance you run ? Spend $1000+ on a depth sounder and another $600 on the transducer but go to harbour freight to save money on the crimped connectors. To me it just doesn’t make sense to do this. I probably see this is a little diffrent light than most people because of my background.

Point well taken.

I don’t use cheap bait or cheap hooks for like reasons. I don’t get to fish often… when I do, I don’t need to be missing fish due to saving a few pennies (relatively speaking).

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Luke 8:22-25

Phin, Are you planning to fish the JJ next weekend?

Plum Crazy

26 Regulator’250s

quote:
Originally posted by THE PLUM

Phin, Are you planning to fish the JJ next weekend?

Plum Crazy

26 Regulator’250s


Still working on the boat, but may have it finished. Could get with someone else… is the tourny public again or open only to members?

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Luke 8:22-25

rdw, that is an awesome idea
I might need an infared camera just for trouble shooting

www.teamcharlestonmarine.com
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Seeing is believing:sunglasses: