Baffled by the crimper!

[badfelafel]

I bought a crimping tool
And a bundle of connectors - they have fairly hard plastic/rubber insulators at the ends.

I've no idea how to crimp! The insulators dont come off, and this is all new to me. Any advice? Searching the web hasnt helped!

[alex_holden]

You don't take the plastic off before crimping. Just strip the end of the wire, insert into an appropriately sized connector, and crimp down with the jaws over the metal part of the connector. With the cheap crimping tools, I do it twice in two places, and squeeze very hard. The expensive ratchetting tools have wider jaws that only needs to crimp once and a fancy mechanism that reduces the amount of force you need to use. The colour of the plastic (yellow=large, blue=medium, red=small) should match the part of the jaws you use to crimp it with.

After crimping, tug lightly on the wire. If it comes out you probably didn't squeeze hard enough.

[Packedup]

Sounds like the cheap and nasty type (I really don't rate the terminals or the crimper, but they do OK for a couple of years with a dash of luck). The plastic bits stay on the connectors, and you put the crimping tool around them and squeeze. The tools are usually colour coded, so you put the red marked jaws around red connectors, blue round blue, yellow round yellow. Crimp the connector about halfway along the plastic bit, making sure the wire is pushed fully in/ through. Do it a couple of times next to each other to try and make as good a connection as possible.

Then swear when the wire either falls out, or simply rots away within not a very long time at all, and put an Autosparks order in for better kit ;)

[badfelafel]

Got It!! Thanks!

Its cheapo-ish.. but now it can make connections that I cant pull apart, which beats my soldering. Will give the scotch-loks a miss!

thx for help!