What kind of wire for lighting & power accessories?

Never did understand the hatred of crimping till I realized most people used those crappy connectors and pliers. Use pure copper BARE butt connectors, high quality crimpers, and heatshrink with adhesive. The below icons are a clone of my snap on wire crimps that are a god send. And a link of what type of heat shrink im talking about.

$12 Eventronic 400 Pcs Heat Shrink Tubing Kit-3:1 Ratio Adhesive Lined,Marine Grade Shrink Wrap - Industrial Heat-Shrink Tubing - Black

https://www.amazon.com/Eventronic-H...sive+heat+shrink+tubing&qid=1748740162&sr=8-3

 

I actually have no issues terminating with cheap crimps. I just have to be smart enough to keep a selection in stock so that I'm not terminating a 16 gauge wire with a 10 gauge crimp.

What I absolutely turn my nose up at these days however, is butt connectors. I hate butt connectors almost as much as I hate vampire taps. Line splices are solder only. I might be lazy enough to use the self soldering butts, but at least it's better than a crimp butt.


Kind of funny I'm in this thread after spending my entire Saturday kludging up wires.

 

Yeah agree on the crimps, have to use top quality and tools as well.

I work in the utility industry and all of the control wires on the electronics is sis, xlp and crimped with panduit crimpers that cost $300 each.

The only other connection I’ve seen made out at pull boxes is what they call carrots; ring terminals nut and bolted together then wrapped in rubber tape and 3m #33 tape.
For sure odd stuff.

 

I slowly heat the end of the terminal with a propane torch while feeding the solder into it as it heats (and is how I did my #00 cable).


I wasn't meaning to start a solder vs crimp debate, but in a clean environment that is a manufacturing facility, and using all-new components that are also sealed (weatherpack and similar automotive-type connectors, for example), crimping does work well (and provides for much faster assembly speed, which this is whats crucial when manufacturing in high quantities). But exposed in a dirty environment that is the outdoors we play in, crimps that aren't sealed tend to fail much more often (so has been my experience with everything from pre-fabbed wiring harnesses for lights to inline fuseholders (one of which almost burned my truck down) to winch cable terminals, so often so that I always solder these proactively now). I've also done resistance tests on professionally-crimped (purchased from a marine supply shop) vs. soldered #2 cables and found the resistance within the terminal to be about 30-40% lower on a soldered end (which does amount to only 0.00002 vs. 0.00003 ohms, but still).

Agreed, the cheaper the crimp connector (and tool used), the more likely it is to fail. But I've still had supposed-good crimps fail more often than anything I've soldered (or that came soldered). So is why my preference for solder.

 

I hear you and I grew up soldering connections and still do it a lot.

I’m not familiar enough with all of the crimp connectors, weather pack and tools. I bought some but will check out @joeyv141’s links.