Hydraulic Wire Crimping Tool for windless and others at Harbor Freight - 2010

 

 We went to Harbor Freight today and picked up a Hydraulic Wire Crimping Tool and a pair of wire cutters and some long wire ties and a screw driver.
2010 - Marina Cortez San Diego, CA

Harbor Freight is the men’s  toy store. Debbie was with me and she has been there before. She likes the place also.

CHULA VISTA CA #018 

680 L STREET 

CHULA VISTA, CA 91911

Phone: 619-425-5127

I am modeling - Tim "The Tool Man" 

 The tools are for the Lewmar H3 Anchor Windless cables. They are 2 AWG cables. They are 27 feet long and rated to carry the loss for the length of the cable. I was not sure how the system was going to work out at the time we bought the cables. The batteries and most of the cables and buses are installed fuse etc.  so now that the battery setup is close to being finished we can see that the cables for the windlass need to be shortened.

 The length grew with the battery to fuse cable then the fuse to  bus cable and the positive side. That added length.

 On the negative side the battery to buss cable added a few feet.

The windlass cables have at least a few feet each that can be cut off and still reach fine.

If the cables are too long for their size they will drop too much electricity along the way (loss) and starve the windlass motor of need electricity shorting its life and the amount of power it can produce.

Before, the windlass cables went right to the batteries as we did not have anything else installed (buses , fuses etc.).

So the cables from the windlass need to be cut shorter. Problem is the cables we have already snaked all the way to the bow through cabinet’s two hanging lockers and behind drawers and behind the vanity in the head etc. They are secured and have other wires tied to them etc. So rather than rip them out, take them to the chandlery and do the work (cut and crimp new ends using their tolls) and then re-snake them through the boat we decided to buy the Hydraulic Wire Crimping Tool. The wire size is on the edge of its range so we brought a cable end we purchased at Downwind Marine, a nice one. At the store we tried fitting it and it seemed to fit in the largest die fine so we bought it.

Online the reviews said it was sized for cables (like rigging wire) so for doing battery cables it was a bit smaller. It did seem to fit fine though.

We also got a cutter for cheap.

 We will sell the crimper on eBay of Craig’s list when we are done with it.

It is about half the price of a crimping tool that goes to 4 AWG like the ones at West Marine that you can use in store, at least in the Point Loma store.