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  • ResourcesVideosHow to Make a Battery Cable for Your…
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How to Make a Battery Cable for Your Boat

View Transcript
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Transcript is auto-generated.

hey guys welcome to

boating tech talk today we're going to

be going over

crimping and connecting lugs for

heavy-duty

battery jumpers so we've been working on

this

system here which is a solar controller

connected to our fuse block

and then an unswitched terminal bar what

we're going to do

is from here now we're going unswitched

to our battery

and we've got our fuse here for

protection of our jumper

we went from our 10 gauge wire up

to four number four is bigger it goes

down in size as the cable gets bigger

and then what we have here is

two art or two zero cable which is

one of the larger cables that we use

here for battery jumpers

we've already got one end on with our 5

16 ring

for our bus bar

like that and we're going to our mrbf

fuse which

i know is a 5 16 but it's always good to

check

take that off make sure that we've got

the right ring it's fine to redo these

if you mess them up it's always better

make sure you redo them if it's not

perfect

but there's no point in redoing one just

because you forgot to check that it's

the right

ring size which happens so

what we do first is make sure that our

jump is long enough first of all

we've got enough length here so when we

strip it and add our lug it's going to

reach to where we need to go

and we're going to be able to keep it

neat with nice even bends we don't want

tight bends on our cable

we want to keep it nice curves

enough length and then we're going to

make sure we've got a nice clean cut

from our cable cutters on here

and then measure out how much we need to

strip off

so you can see here we're going to hold

it up here we want the

inside the wire to come all the way up

to the end of the log

so we're holding it here we're going to

measure it

what i'm going to do is show you what it

looks like if we were to do one

wrong if we were to strip too much off

so i'm actually going to come a little

bit further back

and demonstrate that we're going to take

our knife

to our mark slowly come around the

jacket

you need to push hard enough that you go

through the jacket

but not hard enough that you start to

pierce

and taking off some of the strands of

your cable should be able to grab it

like that

and see that it's starting to separate

the whole way around

there's a little bit more there that we

need to take off

just being careful not too much

this one's actually quite nice

it's coming off pretty evenly and i

would almost be able to pull this with

my hands or a pair of pliers

but if it's not coming off so nice

sometimes when it's cold out these

cables are a bit more stiff and it's

hard to strip this insulation when it's

cold

so take my knife just enough through the

insulation

strip it down like that so that it

separates

and comes off nicely we did lose a

couple of strands there

but on a larger gauge cable like this

one or two strands is

totally acceptable so even holding this

up to it now you can see it's going to

be

far too long but just as a demonstration

of

why that's bad i'll show you so it's

down there now

you can see we've got strands sticking

out the side that's

you don't want that you don't want to

cut those what you want to do is

actually

take that off and try and get those back

inside the lug

can be a little bit difficult i find

it's nice all

cables even their smaller 10 gauge wires

inside they have a twist they're all

twisting one way

putting on even a smaller heat shrink

connector a number four lug

a big two zero lug i like to hold the

end

kind of follow the twist of the cable

to help make sure all of those strands

come inside the cable you see i still

have some sticking out

just gonna get those in there you can

see that that's wrong there's too much

sticking out

we want it all the way to the end like

it is now but we don't want to see

any wire in here so i'd take that off

we know we're taking off about that much

take my big cutters parabens eagle beaks

depending on where you come from

come down on the cable i'm using my leg

here sometimes if you have it the other

way it's nice to use under your arm like

this

squeeze until it's tight and the cable's

not going anywhere and you know you have

good purchase

and go back to two hands and push

let's make a little bit of a mess there

with all of our strands

okay there's any that didn't quite get

cut by the bigger crampers

you can take a smaller set of cutters

and trim those off so now when we

push on our lug we're twisting keeping

that same twist as the cable

going all the way down hard against

the jacket and i can feel that it's all

the way

against the end of this lug once again

just like so so now that we have it

stripped

the right length we're going to crimp it

we're going to use our battery crimpers

again

we use these and they have a multiple

die set in here so for

anywhere from six gauge wire it's got a

four gauge wire

all the way down to four zero wire we're

using two zero and so it says i need

dies e and a i already have e here

on this side so i'm going to push this

in

and we spin the die and we've got b

there's a

c k h all the way so we've got b

a sorry e and a for two zero

we need two crimps on these bigger ones

to make sure that the

full tube of this lug is crimped to our

wire

i like to start at the bottom to make

sure that that keeps

this nice compression against the jacket

i've got the crimper tucked up under my

armpit making these bigger battery

cables

it's sometimes so much easier to do it

ahead of time

if you're crawling into like a lazarette

or

under a dash or into a bilge to connect

these to a battery it can be pretty

difficult to get these

like that's quite a span that we have on

these here so to get these in here and

get the purchase

can be quite difficult and with two watt

cable if you're not putting most of your

weight against these cramps to cramp it

down something's wrong

you might have the die set wrong but it

should be a considerable amount of your

body weight going against this to crimp

it

so it's good to have it ahead of time

you can maneuver it around make sure

that it stays straight i tuck it all the

way up

come to here i've got it tight on the

cable now

and i'm going to start to crimp as it

starts to cramp it's not going to go

anywhere now

and i can come back and have both hands

and push

and that's quite a weight that i'm

pushing against that cable

when we release you can see we've got a

nice

even crimp around it's pushed up against

the jacket

and we're ready for our second crimp up

further it doesn't matter which one you

do first i just

my preference like to do the bottom one

first to make sure that i have the good

where i need to

a little tough as you can see that's

part of the reason also it would be

difficult

to do that in a confined space getting

it over this

can be pretty hard so now we have our

lug crimped on

it's not going anywhere it's very tight

no wiggle

we're going to add our heat shrink

sliding it over you want about two

inches of heat shrink or i say usually

around three fingers

making sure that this bottom section of

the lug

where it actually connects to either our

terminal bar

or to our battery post doesn't have heat

shrink on it it needs to be far enough

back

when it sits hard against the terminal

there's no

heat shrink impeding it if you were to

do too much there is a way you can strip

it so what i'll do is

heat shrink this a little too far up and

then we can strip the heat shrink back

just the same as we would insulation

so i was using my butane gun for the

smaller

connections on these guys once you get

up to the battery terminals you can use

this

i find it gets a little bit time

consuming and i'm burning through gas

especially if you're building a battery

bank and you're doing maybe five or six

of these at a time

so i move over and i use the

electric heat gun this one's nice

because it stands up flat

so again we're doing this ahead of time

we can sit it there

flat it's not going anywhere

and we can get a nice even heat onto our

lug

so we start this up again with the heat

shrink i like to start

at the end of the lug and work my way

down to make sure no air gets trapped in

the heat shrink

so holding it

here slowly i just start to turn around

almost like a small

slowly slowly not too close you don't

want it to burn

if you see any kind of discoloration or

anything happening on this heat shrink

or bubbling

then start again it's okay to strip it

off and just start again

there's resin inside this heat shrink

and you don't want to burn off that

resin or lose any of that resin

see there we got a nice even heat

shrunk down and you can actually see the

dimples inside

the heat shrink of where i crimp my lug

so that's perfect

now i've got my resin coming out here

which means i got good heat all the way

down

but you can see that on here

it's on the flat part of my lug so as i

go to put this

on my bus bar you can see there there's

actually going to be

heat shrink on the bar which you don't

want you want

a nice flat connection as much surface

area as possible so we're going to strip

that off

and we'll do it just the same way that

we did our cable

just start a little further back and

work our way around

okay around and it's

resin in there so you might just need to

cut that off

it should peel off just like that and

now that's perfect

we have clean surface area here so that

when we come down

there's no heat shrink touching this and

we still have a good amount of heat

shrink covering our lug

we already had our other end done

we're pre-preparing this for if we're in

a difficult to reach place

we left lots of length and we're just

coming back to

our mrbf fuse here so probably use this

one

it's just a demonstration so i'm going

to leave it finger tight but it's always

important to make sure that you revisit

every new

attachment point that you do and make

sure that it's tight before you apply

power

so here we have the mrbf fuse and again

the stacking of this is important so

that you don't have resistance

these are stainless pieces of hardware

which are not good

electrical conductors so you need to

make sure that the last thing that goes

on

we have the base of our fuse our fuse

our cable and then our washers

again we revisit that make sure both of

these are tied

but that's how you do a battery jumper

thank you for watching this pys video if

you've got further questions please

ask them below or send us an email via

the contact forms on our website

happy to donate my time to share

information with you you can support us

in keeping this channel

ad free by purchasing some merchandise

on our store

or by making a donation on paypal and

don't forget to subscribe

thanks again for watching

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