The concern with soldering the 4ga cable would be the heat from the 200watt
gun melting the insulation on the wires. If you do it quick enough it may
work OK.
I have just found you can make a better connection with using both crimp and
solder. The OEM battery cables are very rigid and only have maybe 15-20
strands. The solder doesn't always hold to them too well.
When I installed my stereo I installed new battery terminals and replaced
all the battery cables with a very flexible audio grade cable, it has over
1000 strands on the 4ga wire which holds wire much better than OEM.
Most of the high end audio hardware uses crimp/compression style connections
on the larger wires instead of solder. I think my OEM cables were crimped
on where they used the ring terminals. Crimp connections tend to hold up
to vibration much better too.
All in all I recommend crimp terminals
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kyle Kozubal" <grndak4x4@home.com>
To: <dakota-truck@buffnet.net>
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 4:59 PM
Subject: DML: Re: Re: Soldering Question
> > I think you would have better luck with the crimp on type of terminals.
I
> > have picked some up at local car audio places for about .20 each. I
don't
> > have a crimper that big so I use a phillips screw driver and a vise or
> > vise-grips. Use the screw driver shaft to push the split in the crimp
> part
> > of the terminal down first. If you want I can send you some pics of how
I
> > do this. It holds very well, I have also in the past (after I crimped
it)
> > tinned it with solder to give it a little more holding power. How many
> > strands of wire are in the cable? What gauge is the cable?
>
> The wire is about 4-6 guage, for the main negative and main positive wires
> alteast. There are 3 total positive wires I need to put ring style
terminals
> on, two of them are smaller and most certainly can be soldered. The
negative
> side has 2 wires which need ring terminals on them, one also being a
smaller
> wire, about a 12 gauge wire which is the battery chassis ground. Like I
> said, I definately know the smaller wires can be soldered, just not 100%
> about the large main neg/pos wires......which appear to be 4-6 gauge. I
dont
> know how many strands are in the main 4-6 gauge wires, since I havent
> removed the wires from the stock battery terminal clamps yet; as I want to
> make sure I will be able to solder them before I mess things up realized I
> cant solder them. I have a Weller 25 watts pencil style iron and a large
> Craftsman 200 max watt iron. I would of course be using the beastly 200
watt
> soldering gun, and possibly employing the help of my propane torch if
really
> needed to heat things up. I want to get the new military terminals on
soon,
> cause the stock terminals dont have the grip on the battery posts like
they
> used to, I guess the stockers just stretched over time. So whatcha all
> think.......should I go ahead and cut the 4-6 gauge wires and hope I will
be
> able to solder some ring terminals on them????
> Kyle
> 93 Dakota 4x4 V6
>
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