Harbor Freight/eBay Hydraulic Wire Crimpers

[astroracer]

I posted this in my build thread but I know not everyone looks in there so I posted it here so more of you will see it...
I was holding off crimping all of the big stuff until I ordered one of these hydraulic terminal crimpers off eBay last week.

Harbor Freight sells this for 70 bucks. I got it for <55 dollars and free shipping...
I got it today and tried it out on a 1/0 cable terminal. I can say it worked very well and I am glad I waited to do these crimps until I got this tool...
Here is the lug I am going to crimp. As you can see this is pretty big. The tool comes with dies to do up to 2/0.

Excellent investment and it makes some nice looking crimps. I am going to look into hard mounting it to the bench. It gets kind of busy trying to hold the cable in place while trying to actuate the hand pump on the crimper.

I clamped the lug in the vise and tested the crimp. It will take a lot of force to pull the lug off...
I finished up the crimp with some heat shrink and called it good...

Of course I have at least a half dozen of these to do on the big cables and as many or more on the 4 ga. stuff. Should be fun now.
Mark

[sjaroslo]

Thanks for posting this. I had to pay CA sales tax but still seems like a pretty good deal, hopefully better than the dies that go in a vise, as my workbench vice is woefully inadequate...

[astroracer]

Hey Steve,
It is a good deal and it crimped the 1/0 with no problem. I saw zero difference in effort to do the crimp from start to finish. I see it doing the same with the 2/0.

[astroracer]

I modified my crimper yesterday so it will easily clamp to the welding bench. Frees up a hand for holding the wire in place.
I marked out a pattern for a couple of drilled and tapped holes in the head.

I will be screwing it to this piece of 1/4" plate with a couple of drilled and counter bored holes.

I clamped the tool in the drill press vise and drilled two holes out to .149 for tapping for a #10-32 screw.

Here is the plate getting drilled and counter bored.

Test fit. Bolted up nice and was very sturdy. This will work great when I get to crimping all of the van cables...


Cleaned and painted the plate.

This will be good to go and, if I need it do any crimps in tight places, the plate will come right off.
Thanks for looking. This will continue in the build thread.
Mark

[Thephranc]

Really nice mod.

[T_Raven]

Haven't seen these before. Thanks for sharing. Nice clamp idea.

[astroracer]

Thanks guys, glad to be of service.
I had a few people ask, "why not just clamp it in a vise?"
You could, if you were only doing a few crimps that would work fine. I want to be able to take the crimper right to the vehicle. The plate will let me clamp it to just about any flat surface. Especially at the front of the van where I will be doing a bunch of these big crimps. Clamping the crimper to the radiator support will save having to walk back and forth to the vise at the other end of the room...
Mark

[Motown 454]

Mark you always have great ideas. I enjoy your build posts.