Anderson SB120 to XT60

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TreadingLight said:
Janky. Possible, but janky. Is running a new wire that unpalatable?
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Yeah, it’s janky. I won’t deny.
But I’m actually trying to streamline my setup a bit. Doesn’t that make it less janky?

Where I currently have a female cigarette power socket along with a SB120 connection, this way I get to get rid of the cigarette lighter connection.
 
MCtree said:
Here is a picture of the final assembly - before I shrunk the shrink-wrap.
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MCtree said:
But I’m actually trying to streamline my setup a bit. Doesn’t that make it less janky?
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You did an excellent job of hiding the jank. But it is still there.

those set screws will vibrate loose over time. If you used adhesive heat shrink the glue will hold the wires in place but the connection will be weak. Weak enough to be a problem? You'll have to let us know.

But it is clean and there is a lot to be said for that, so kudos. But I gotta ask, why the aversion to crimp tools and wire runs? Now that you've done it this way, i'd highly recommend picking up even a basic crimper and the terminals for it and use that for situations like this.

ntsqd said:
I make large steps like that at an isolated stud. Two appropriately sized ring terminals and done. Also makes it easy to tap into the power circuit if needed.
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This is a good point. One could run a new 10g wire from the bus bus bar like I'd suggested, or put a 2-stud bus bar / junction block at the end of the 6g and run a short 10g from that.
 
I hope those set screws don’t vibrate loose! I am, indeed, counting on the shrink-wrap to hold them in place. I considered lock-tight on them but decided the wrap would be sufficient. But now you have me second guessing.

As for crimping, I’m not at all against it. Note that the in-line fuse I put on that assembly is crimped on.
But that’s a 10ga wire to a 10ga wire.
I wasn’t able to find a crimp that would go from 10 to 6awg. So I used that assembly with the set-screws.

And my current set-up is pictured below. You want “janky” and that’s it!
All three of those connections are attached to a bus-bar inside of that compartment.
Basically I want to get rid of both of those female cig lighter plugs and just have the SB120.
And yeah, I could wire a wire with a XT60 end directly to the bus-bar in the compartment, but I’m trying to avoid having two dangling wires.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

IMG_3122.webp
 
I've been known to strip off twice the needed insulation, twist the strands, and then bend them in half to form a tight u-bend before inserting the wire in a larger gauge crimp connector.
In this case I'd have started with new SB50 terminals of the smallest wire gauge crimp size offered. then it would depend on how far off the size mismatch was. If close, double back the wire & crimp. If far, then make copper reducer bushings & solder.
 
TreadingLight said:
With fuses:
Without fuses:

Cig lighter:

Sb50:

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I already have a bus bar and fuses. I had an integrated fuse block like the one in your first link, but note that it only allows 30A per circuit. In one of my uses, I need about 45A. So now I have a bus-bar similar to the ones in your second link.
I'm just trying to reduce the wires coming off of the bus-bar so my setup is cleaner.

And I am not sure if I said it anywhere above, but that blue-sea cigarette socket you link above is the same one I already have installed in my panel. (Shown in the picture on post #43 above.) It's great!

As for the mountable Anderson connector panels; those would be an ideal solution! But the reason I haven't installed one is that the panel where my power is is the plastic panel for our jacks. It's kind of a flimsy plastic. Plugging and unplugging an Anderson SB120 takes a bit of force. I don't think the panel will hold up to that kind of manipulation. But please let me know if I have this wrong and somebody has mounted an Anderson Connector onto that panel and it held up.
Or if there is another place to mount such a connector.

I very much appreciate the suggestions though. I fear there is an obvious solution that I'm overlooking so appreciate all suggestions.

And to be clear to all.. I like all the input. Especially since this is a frivolous project of mine. My current set-up works fine as-is. I'm just trying to make it more elegant. (less janky).
 
ntsqd said:
I've been known to strip off twice the needed insulation, twist the strands, and then bend them in half to form a tight u-bend before inserting the wire in a larger gauge crimp connector.
In this case I'd have started with new SB50 terminals of the smallest wire gauge crimp size offered. then it would depend on how far off the size mismatch was. If close, double back the wire & crimp. If far, then make copper reducer bushings & solder.
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I think you hit on my major issue here... I don't know how to solder. I know.. I know.. I need to learn. It's just daunting.

But since this wire is only meant to carry 9amps, at 12V, I'm hoping I can make do with crimps or connectors.
 
The way to learn to solder is to start soldering. Then go to Utoob University and I'm sure that someone has posted a tutorial. But it's been my experience that without having tried it first you don't know whats important and what isn't important. You may still not know, but you'll have a better idea.
 
Done well soldering won't make the wire brittle. Done poorly and it will. If you're seeing the solder wick up into the wire strands out of the terminal then it's become brittle.
Extensive testing done by a former co-worker for Boeing showed that neither conducts better or worse than the other.
 
He didn't find that to be the case, IF the soldering was done correctly. The only problem with soldering for commercial aircraft use that he encountered was finding the skill-set that could consistently do a Boeing Spec job of it. Whereas use the right crimper (cue: DMC crimpers) and nearly anyone could do it correctly.
John is a very, very smart guy and he told me that he spent 18 months on the testing because he knew that whatever he came up with was going to set Boeing's path going forwards. It is possible to mess up a crimp. Can crimp it too much and introduce that same brittleness in the wire. It's pretty fine line between crimped enough and crimped too much. If the crimped portion grew in length it's crimped too much.

In my own experience my avatar was all soldered terminals. Ran that buggy beating it against the Mojave (Calicos mostly, but some El Pasos) & Sierra (Swamp Lake, Dusy-Irshim, etc.) rocks for over a decade. In all of that time I had one failure. Solder wicked up into the strands and I didn't catch it. Fatigue failed and left me in the middle of the desert North of the El Pasos at about 9pm. By the time the group figured out I wasn't with them and came back looking for me I nearly had it fixed.
 
it's easy to mess up a crimp. Some folks apparently seem to think you can take any old pliers, squeeze a bit any old way and that's it as long as it does not pull out easily. Well, not really...
Personally, I'd rather crimp too much than not enough.
 
I would never solder a terminal that was designed and engineered to be crimped, unless it was some sort of emergency and I happened to have a soldering iron on hand.

The way I look at it, you get the best results if you solder things designed to be soldered and crimp things that are designed to be crimped.

Either way works best if you don't screw it up by over-crimping or using too much/wrong type/wrong temp solder.

To the OP, soldering is a handy skill but not at all mandatory. You could rebuild the entire harness in a land cruiser with two crimp tools and no soldering irons. Just like Toyota did at the factory.
 
Any more most things are intended to be crimped, but some of them (all of the multi-contact connectors used in automotive & industrial but not marine or some 38999 applications like Weatherpack, Metri-Pack, Deutsch, etc.) require the correct crimping tool. Use the wrong tool and you may as well solder them.
 
True. Crimper acquisition syndrome is a risk when in pursuit of the perfect crimp or the bazillion standards out there.

But if one primarily wanted to do Toyota OEM terminals, they could do that with the Hozan 706 for sealed and the 707 for unsealed yazaki/sumitomo terminals. Available on Eastern Beaver.

Add an Amazon iCrimp IWS-6 and Airic non-insulated butt splices + heat shrink and you can make all kinds of wire repairs and splices mid harness.

If you want to add/fix accessories it can get complicated but if you have the luxury of picking a single type of connector (just choose Deutsch) you can just buy a crimper for that and ignore the rest.

Until you decide you want to make battery cables so you buy a hydraulic cable crimper.

And then decide you want to fix fusible links and battery connections so you get an iCrimp 5100a to do the beefier open-barrel terminals.

And then you wonder if Metripack might be better than Deutsch so you get a 280 crimper but regret that decision because you should just use Deutsch.

Until you decide to put solar panels on the roof so you pick up a pair of mc4 crimpers.
 
I standardized on Weatherpack before Deutsch became available and see no need to change, Weatherpack's do what I need. If I need more/better than that I'll go to Burton's. (Am partial to the Shell Size 12 because I did all of the design work on it.)

Don't need a hyd. crimper for large cables, a quality hex die crimper does the job just fine. I'd rather have a quality manual hex die crimper than a cheap hyd. square die crimper. BT, DT at my previous employer. A good cable crimper will have it's die cavities color coded to the lugs. It will also imprint the die size used in the crimp. NEC lugs are color coded, marine/industrial/automotive are not and should be.

I put fusible links on terminal strips. Make several spares and put them on unused terminals. That way a field repair is a Phillips screw-driver.
 
I still fail to see the need for the complexity of hydraulic crimpers. I have both short and long handled manual cable crimpers and neither requires the kind of effort that would make me wish for a hydraulic solution.
 
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