Help Please, No Power is Reaching Electrical Panel at Helm!

It's true that the larger crimper can be a challenge to get into certain places. I have to plan for that. However, since most larger wires/cables tend to have ring terminals on the ends, I can oftentimes just get the whole cable out and do it on the bench. Or I find a way to get the tool in place. Or, like recently when I cut my engine cables (they were 9' long and I was able to cut off around half of that and go to larger wire at my lazarette bus), I made one around 4" longer than I otherwise might have so that I could get it above the lid of the lazarette to crimp it (since I didn't want to completely de-rig the engine). And sometimes I have to plan ahead for a sequence of crimps so I don't get "painted into a corner."

It does make beautiful crimps though - I like it a lot.
 
Surprised no one has brought up that the original breaker appears to be a Blue Sea knock off.
Pat, when you replace spend the extra dollars for a Blue Sea breaker. From what I have seen overall quality is far superior to the brand X versions

On the soldering vs crimping debate, stick with crimping unless you have a fair amount of soldering experience. The correct tools are needed for either method. Personally I do both using bare connectors (no plastic barrel sleeve). The lack of a sleeve lets you verify that the crimp is not done on the seam side of the barrel and I use a Klein 1005 crimp tool for up to 10ga wire. Crimp, solder and heat shrink. For weather exposed connections spray with crossionX or goop with dielectric grease, use 3 times the length of the connection of correct sized heat shrink and keep the exposed terminal gooped with dielectric grease.
Seen more issues with bad wire stripping than bad crimping so it’s important to have a good “set” of wire strippers, don’t turn a 16ga wire into a 22ga by knife stripping. A heat gun for heat shrinking is a must.

stevej
 
stevej":2bquks7y said:
Seen more issues with bad wire stripping than bad crimping so it’s important to have a good “set” of wire strippers, don’t turn a 16ga wire into a 22ga by knife stripping. A heat gun for heat shrinking is a must.

stevej
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That is a good point. It took me some practice (and getting a better tool, natch) before I was able to stop having to strip wires over and over to get a good job. One tool I really like is the Ideal Stripmaster (I know, sounds like it should have a racy soundtrack accompaniment every time you get it out of the box). It "automatically" strips wires from (IIRC) 22 AWG to 10 AWG. Kind of fun to use as you just close the handles and the insulation goes flying off and you are left with a perfect wire (99% of the time). Whee! For larger wires I still use a cutter to score the outer jacket, then bend it a little to stress the jacket and very carefully use a sharp utility knife to "pop cut" the rest of it (which works when it is under tension) without scoring strands.

Of course I went through lots of practice wire along the way, and still prefer not to have those "okay this one has to be perfect or else" situations, but sometimes they can't be avoided.
 
Power to the helm has been restored! Yesterday I bought a 50 amp Blue Sea breaker, some 8 AGW terminal connectors with 1/4 inch holes, some dielectric grease, some corrosion block spray and some heat shrink tubing at LFS. I have a Klein tool (VDV010-019, actually for coax and F connectors but works well as an all-around cable cutter/stripper) that I had bought when I was doing my solar install. I have had a heat gun for years.

The Klein tool made a clean cut of the corroded end of the cable and stripped it perfectly. I slipped the heat shrink up over the cable, crimped the terminal connector on with water pump pliers (channel locks, or whatever you call them), slipped the heat shrink tubing down, and sealed it up with the heat gun. I put dielectric grease on the breaker posts and nuts and on both terminal connectors, reconnected it all up, and finally sprayed everything with the corrosion block spray!

This is a much better job than i probably would have done without the sage advice of my fellow Brats!

I should be good to go for another 11 years (which is how long the C-Dory job lasted, 2005 to 2016)!
 
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