who is wrong. Gro Harlem has a excellent write up on how to make a ground wire kit for the
engine bay's of our MX-3's. This post is not intended to overshadow or replace his walkthrough,
rather its intended to compliment his write up. The purpose of this post is to show, anyone that
wants to know, how to make professional quality cables for very little cash. Now this post takes
tools of most sorts for granted. If you are working on your own car, you should have a decent
tool set already and if you dont, you should really budget some cash and invest in a variety of
high quality tools. Any project goes a LOT smoother if you have the proper tools to begin with.
I bought the cable at Central Welding supply. Its 4 gauge cable and while I dont remember the
strand count.. but you can see in the following pics that it has lots of strands. I bought 8 feet
of this cable for $6.32 US. I bought a box of the connectors (12 count in the box)
you will see for $7.89. I bought the heat shrink wrap in a package of varying sizes for less
than $8.00.
Ok.. lets get started. Its really a very simple process. In the following pics, you will see the cable
& connectors I used to make this particular cable.
Here is a pic of the end of the cable after I stripped the insulation off the end in preparation
for attaching it to the copper connector.
Here is a pic of the connectors I used.
After stripping both ends of the cable.. cutoff about 3-4 inches of solder.. wad it up into a ball
and stuff it into the end of the connector. Then place the connector in something to hold it..
I used Vice grips like this.
Now use a propane torch like this one (or something similar.. heck even
one of those jet cigarette lighters might work ok)
and heat up the connector until the solder inside the connector melts.
Then immediately stuff the end of the cable into the connector..
if the solder cools you may have to reheat the connector to get the end of
the cable fully seated. Now just slide on some heat shrink material and
using the heat of the torch (NOT the flame) shrink it up snug around the
connection. This is what you will have when you are done.
This cable cost a grand total of no more than $4.00 in materials. Yes I have tools,
but I dont look at any tool purchase as a one time use item, if I have to buy
a tool to do a project, then I know I will have the tool for any future projects.
So I dont include the cost of tools in this sort of thing cause tools are an investment
in our ability to successfully do ANY project.
I hope this helps some folks out. Best wishes.
Tunes67
