Making battery cables

[Goober11]

Look for a good quality hydraulic crimper. What do you recommend. The ones I have look up online (Amazon) do not have good reviews. Alot say if you are crimping a 6 gauge wire you first crimp with the 6 gauge die thin repeat with the 4-gauge die. I have manual crimper that sucks!

[Fairtax4me]

I got one of the cheapos years ago and quality is.... meh. But it was only like $40.
It works, actually pretty well for 4ga cables, which is mostly what I use it for.

There are various hand crimpers that are probably easier, but are mostly only for 1 or 2 crimp sizes. So you buy two or three different ones if you need to do more than one size cable. I have one that has three sizes in the jaw and use it for aluminum cable swages. I think its a 30" size, and does up to 5/8" swages pretty easy.

If you really want to go all out you could order a $5,000 Gates hydraulic crimper and get all the dies to make hydraulic hoses to help pay for it.

[Goober11]

I will be doing mostly 6 an 4-gauge cables. Hand crimpers are really hard for me to work now.

Ya Gates does make a nice crimper we had one at the shop were I worked. We made all your battery cables, air hoses and hydraulic hoses. May be just a little over kill at this stage of the game for me.

Going to have to do some more searching on line.

[DOOmsman]

still live by the shop? maybe dry fit and hire them to crunch them, maybe cheaper than buying crimers.

[Capt. Lenny]

You might try a battery shop such as "Battery Wholesale". I had them crimp, solder and heat shrink 6 of them for my boat for me and they wouldn't take any money for the job. I supplied all the materials and they did the labor. Left $20 on their work bench and I'm sure they wondered where it came from later.

[Goober11]

Originally Posted by DOOmsman

still live by the shop? maybe dry fit and hire them to crunch them, maybe cheaper than buying crimers.

I am 30 minutes away but we could not do any work for yourself. Worked on the Big Brown road tractors for 30 years.

[augiedoggy]

I made my 2wg cables yesterday with a economical crimper I bought last year on amazon thats worked well for me for a couple projects now. I used this one. it provides a solid crimp with the terminals I used.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

On the flip side I found trying to use this crimper to crimp the wrong size terminal ends to the wrong size cable doesnt work well... YMMV

[Goober11]

Originally Posted by Capt. Lenny

You might try a battery shop such as "Battery Wholesale". I had them crimp, solder and heat shrink 6 of them for my boat for me and they wouldn't take any money for the job. I supplied all the materials and they did the labor. Left $20 on their work bench and I'm sure they wondered where it came from later.

I have been getting a lot made for the 48 volt club cars. I talked to David at Revolution Golf Cars and he said he could have them made up for me. If I work on another resistor cart that needs cables I will go that route.

I figured up the cost to make cables not much difference in having them made.

I have to get a set of batteries I will ask them what they charge.