Barry_B

Piece of cake to solder if you have the right stuff, and solder alone with the right type of lugs and tools is fine, but in fact I crimped and soldered the new ends on. A few pics of tools and install below, I'm working on car right now so I have no excuse for not posting pics!

I used crimp-on AMP ring terminals at both ends, sized for the wire and starter lug at rear; at the battery end I used a ring terminal sized for a new battery terminal clamp, the type that lets you bolt two sets of ring terminals (one large, one small) on to it (see pics).

You do need to have a suitably beefy crimping tool, solder gun and heat gun - see pics... the large hand crimper would do, but I have the Harbor Freight hand-held hydraulic crimper/swager with dies that is easier to use and works much better. 150W solder guns work well to allow thorough soldering of the crimped terminals. I used marine-grade heat shrink (also from HF if you don't have the really HD stuff) over the lugs and wire ends for reinforcement and protection, the type that has adhesive/sealant inside.

Really important to clean the fresh ends to maximize conductivity and make it easy for the solder to wet everything inside the voids in the crimp. You can tease out the strands and clean them using heavy tweezers with the copper braid from a piece of coax slipped over the ends. Don't use acid cored flux! I used high-silver content flux-cored solder (Radio Shack, Fry's etc) which is (unnecessarily so in this case as I crimped first) also mechanically stronger than regular electronics solder. Main thing is not to let the inevitable excess molten solder fall on you when soldering the starter lug!

Good luck!

theiceman

Thats some nice work right there . The key is the crimping for sure. I see what you did with all the extra bolt on's too. I was wondering what to do with all those extra wires.

Ed Hughes

Geez Barry, if I ever need monster electric tools, I'm calling you.

Barry_B

Anytime Ed! You know where I am. Electronical shenanigans a part of my biz. I don't have a cool lift though ... yet!

Barry_B

BTW, it's a marine-style battery terminal, I replaced the usual butterfly nut with a regular one, and used a replacement clamp bolt that has a stud on the bolt head (not visible in the pic) - the other wires aren't just placed under the clamp-bolt head, which would be bad, bad! Marine supply stores often carry trick brass stuff for all this; I found these parts from the cheesy "marine section" at one of the auto-parts chains.

Also I noticed that the pic shows a solder cup lug, not a crimp lug, on the battery end. It was just what I had in my tool box. Crimp then solder way to go, for sure - to get a good joint with the large solder-cup lugs is something helped by prior experience ...

rusnak

Is that huge cable going all the way to the battery? Start jet engines much?

Barry_B

No it's just a really teensy starter

Ed Hughes

You are right about the marine battery stuff. I've got some pretty serious Group 27 batteries in parallel on the new boat for the house power. Two battery switching systems, charger, etc. All mounted to threaded posts. Nice.