- Hi, I'm Matt Lewis with Hagerty
and today's DIY we're gonna talk about
different ways to connect wires and why you would use them.
So for today's demonstration I'm going to introduce
you to some of my favorite tools.
This one right here, our wire strippers,
auto strippers.
And these, this is a nice set of crimpers
designed for crimping.
Butt connectors and different types of connectors.
Finally we have a more standard wire stripper.
I don't like these as much as the auto-stripper,
but they do a fine job.
Personally, I just, I like these better.
So we'll set those aside.
Now to start off with any wire connection,
what you're gonna want to do is
make sure you have
some bare wire showing.
Now, especially if you're working on
an older car you wanna make sure that
this bare wire is shiny and clean.
Often times, you'll see corrosion and that
sort of thing and that can actually
add resistance to the circuit.
And may cause things to not function properly.
In order to connect these two,
something I always like to do with wires
is just give them a twist.
It helps keep these strands of this stranded wire
bunched together,
and it makes it a little neater when you're
going to connect them.
We'll do the same with our red wire.
First way we're going to connect these two
wires is with a barrel connector, or a butt connector
as I've heard them called.
These are little plastic connectors where
on the inside, there's a metal tube essentially.
And that metal tube is what connects the two wires.
You can see this metal tube has a split down the middle
that's something to keep in mind.
You're gonna want to orient yourself with that split.
So, we'll take our first wire.
We'll run it in.
Being careful that the shielding of the wire
extends inside of our connector here.
We know we have that done well.
So what we're gonna do is
I like to take,
as you can see there's the split here
on this top.
I like to have that facing away.
So that when we used our crimper,
we're placing that in the cop,
or the bottom.
So you can see where it is here on the bottom.
And then when we crimp down.
We make a good strong, grab of that wire.
Now, we're gonna do the same thing with our
second blue side.
Slide this inside of here.
Again, making sure that the shielding
on the wire extends inside of this connector.
And crimping it down like we did with the red.
This makes a nice strong connection.
That's just fine for a lot of applications.
This style of connection connects these two wires,
fairly well electrically.
Where these don't work as well is
in an environment that might get wet.
Outside of the car, under the car,
in the engine bay.
I don't like these as much because moisture
and water can get inside.
And start to corrode this connection.
So these definitely work well inside of the cab.
If you're wiring up a stereo,
that sort of thing.
But I'd avoid using them anywhere that
moisture could really get to them.
If you would like to use a barrel connector
somewhere that susceptible to moisture,
they do make special ones that have
heat-shrink too, on the outside.
So you would connect these,
the exact same way we did the other one.
With our nice crimper tool.
Now that this connections made,
you can use a lighter,
you can use a heat gun.
I have a little special tool here.
So this is just a very small
butane-style soldering iron that came with a
tip specifically for heat-shrink.
And so we'll just wrap it around.
Now the heat from this will shrink down
this external tube.
And as you can see now.
This side is right up against the shielding
of this wire.
Not allowing any moisture inside of our connection.
This is gonna be a better situation
for sealing up this connection
than your just normal plastic style
that doesn't shrink down at all.
So this would be okay to use under the hood,
underneath the car,
somewhere that is susceptible to moisture.
Because it seals off this end of the wire.
Now you can buy kits of different
types of connectors.
This one here.
And then this is a much nicer
that has the shrink style connector on it.
We'll talk about those in a minute.
You can get these at local hardware stores,
at auto part stores, that sort of thing.
And it's nice to have a variety of connectors.
So I like to keep a couple of kits with me.
So let's say we wanna hook up to something like a switch.
Here I've got a pretty standard automotive
switch with the spade-style terminals on the back.
They make specific connectors just to hook to those.
This first one here is a non-shielded connector.
You can see the end is just bare metal.
And then the same thing with a shielded end.
So if you're worried about the switch location
and it shorting out or hitting ground
or running into other wires,
you're gonna wanna run the shielded one
to kind of protect that circuit.
If you're not worried about it at all,
this fellow will do just fine.
So you don't have to have a nice set of
wire-strippers like these in order to
work with the electrical,
but I really like these.
It gives you a very accurate means by which to
strip this wire.
Depending on where you place it,
is how much wire is removed.
You wanna remove about a quarter inch
of shielding when you're working with a connector
like this.
And as I did before,
twist it up and then make sure it extends
far enough in that your shielding is inside
the shielding on the connector
and your wire is extending into the
actual terminal section of the connector.
And with our shielded connector if you're
worried about shorting out and that sort of thing,
it's the exact same deal.
Insert the wire so that the shield is
inside of the shielded connector.
Take our crimper and crimp down.
And now, simply attach it to the connection.
Now you may be wanting to connect to a
post-style terminal like this ignition coil has.
And what you're gonna wanna do with those is
what's called a Ring Terminal.
These Ring Terminals come in a few different sizes.
Not only are they different sizes for
the gauge of the wire that you're working on.
Small, medium, large.
And these colors correspond to the gauge.
But also, the size of the ring that you're
working with.
So you wanna make sure that it's not too big
and sloppy on the ring.
But it also needs to fit over.
So we're gonna go ahead and select this
medium, red-style terminal.
Just like before, we'll twist off our wire.
Slide the terminal over it,
get a nice crimp.
And we're gonna be able to fit this down over,
put a washer back in place.
And you take down your nut,
now you have a nice connection from
your wire to your stud.
So if you don't have good space to be
working with a Ring Terminal,
you do have a few other options.
There's this hook-style terminal,
and then there's this fork-style terminal.
And these are useful if you can't get the
nut all the way off or
it's the type of connector that doesn't come all the way up.
It needs to go under a screw.
What you would do is connect onto this.
And then you can simply slide that onto
your stud and tighten down.
Which would make a decent connection.
Or like with this hook one,
you can get it underneath.
That way if this wire does get pulled on
it's still gonna hold.
So for our final connection type,
we're gonna be soldering.
So here I've got a brand new soldering iron
right from the auto part store.
Cost about five dollars,
comes with a nice little metal stand.
Cause it's gonna get super hot.
And then you just plug it into the wall and
wait until it's hot enough to start
melting the solder.
It usually takes about five to ten minutes.
Go ahead and just apply some to the tip.
You can see yes, it's melting on there nice.
You got a nice little bit of smoke.
So we're ready to start soldering wires.
The solder I've brought today is a 60/40 mix
this is 60 percent tin, 40 percent lead.
And is a Rosin Core Solder.
They make Acid Core Solder,
but you don't want to use that.
That's more for like stained glass work.
Electrical work you almost always want to use
Rosin Core Solder.
So go ahead and take our two wires,
strip 'em back.
You can strip it a little bit more than normal
on this one.
And I like to twist these two together,
make sure they're nice and twisted.
And you wanna make sure you have good
penetration of the solder into the wires.
Good way I found to do that is if you heat the
backside of the wire and kind of feed it in
to the back of the wire.
You'll see it soak in and start to take the
shape of that twisted wire.
If it's nice and shiny and it's taken the shape
of the wire,
that's gonna be a nice good strong connection
for these two wires.
You can see they're really held together with
this solder.
To finish it off, once this is cooled down a little bit.
What we'll do
is put a shrink tube,
make sure to completely cover the exposed wire.
I'm gonna go ahead and use our nice little
shrink tube tool.
So as you can see with our connector now,
the bare wire is completely covered by a shrink tube.
It has been soldered together.
And this is a very strong connection.
Both electrically and physically.
You can't really pull them apart.
This is the best scenario in my opinion
for connecting two wires together.
But if you don't have the space,
you don't have the tools,
you can use these different butt-style connectors
to get the same job done.
Now you may find yourself in a situation
where you need to plug in and unplug a circuit.
Whether it's a temporary light bar or maybe
an external speaker for hooking up to your car.
And what they make for that type of thing is
this bullet connector.
And these are nice,
because they still make a good connection.
Just like our barrel connector did,
to the wire.
The benefit of this is,
you can then plug in when you need it
then when you don't you can unplug it.
So if it's something that you're taking
in and out of the car that needs to
be temporary, this is a great solution.
If you'd like to learn more about soldering
and get a little more in depth information.
Be sure to subscribe to our channel.
Were gonna have a specific solder DIY video
coming out soon.
And if you have any questions or comments
please leave them in the section below.
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