Earth straps

[s2c-08616]

Old earth straps were the braided variety and look dreadful. Is there a preferred, modern equivalent?  And what should be strapped, and to what?

[JohnR2]

Battery to chassis, chassis to engine. There are black coated heavy duty cables available - you can buy the appropriate terminals seperately or some companies will make them up for you. Some vehicles that have a horn push in the middle of the steering wheel need a lower ampage wire earthing the steering rack/column to the chassis.
.

[Wittsend]

Nothing wrong with braided earthing straps, but you can get sheathed earthing cables.

Make your own or buy in fixed lengths.

Try Auto Electrical Supplies

Battery to chassis
Engine, best from near starter motor to chassis
Engine to chassis close to battery stand
Chassis to front panel

 

[w3526602]

Hi,

Me?

I earth the engine seperately to BOTH the chassis AND body, and then EARTH the body to the chassis.

Me?

I like the appearance of shiny new braided Earth straps.

Me?

I prefer my battery cables to have ring-eyes at both ends, with proper clamps on the battery end. Twice (in the RAF), I met battery clamps that were "dry-jointed" onto their cables ... not easy to find ... until you see the smoke.

602

[NoBeardNoTopKnot]

I've banged on about this before. It's rarely a braided - or otherwise - issue. As 602 says, far more likely to be a bad 'dry' crimp rather than a proper flow-soldered crimp that's has you fall foul. Modern cars are soldered for good reason. We no longer consider a car not starting in Feb acceptable.

You can have all the braiding you want, colour-tails too; it'll make not the slightest difference once the dual effects of electrolysis, and damp gets into a dry crimp-joint at each end of the braid.  Ideally fire in dielectric grease over the lot to further keep moisture out of the joint to chassis etc, ie those points where you can't meet the ideal of the aforementioned solder-joint.

Thus if your focus in a high current application is the visual appearance - this of one heavy conductor over another - rather than focus in 300-700 amps thru' a dry joint,  best give up now.

I've seen words of no-solder would be period-correct etc. Yeah right. Expect period-correct starting.

How to clean copper-cable.

You'll want to do this to get solder to flow into a joint. More so with heavy charge/ battery cables. You will fail to solder without clean wire. Solder will just 'sit' on the wire rather than coat and flow.

Mix two solutions, one is regular table salt and vinegar. Any vinegar will work. It's the acidity and corrosiveness of the salt and vinegar together you want. The other solution is Sodium Bicarbonate, or baking soda, and water. This used to neutralise the corrosive properties of the other solution; to further clean the wires. 

Strip the wires to be cleaned.

Get 2 containers, one for each solution. Vials are good.

1 tablespoon of raw salt,  fill up the rest with vinegar. Stir. Put as much salt in the vinegar as will dissolve.

1 tablespoon of Sodium Bicarbonate, (baking soda) and add it to the other container. Fill the rest with water. Stir.  Add more baking soda until cloudy. The amount is not important, as long as it is alkaline to cancel the acid of the vinegar solution.

Put the stripped end of the wire in the vinegar solution, and stir the solution with the wire. Any wire you want cleaned needs to be under the solution. Movement of the wire in the liquid speeds up the process.

Step 6: After 2 minutes or so, the wire will look very shiny and new in the vinegar solution. The acid and salt in the solution is etching away the oxides, exposing the bare metal. Make sure the metal is uniformly shiny. Leave it in longer if it is not perfectly clean throughout.

Step 7: Once the wire is satisfactorily clean, remove the wire from the vinegar, and plunge it into the baking soda solution to neutralise the acid's corrosive properties.  If the wire was exposed to the air, without neutralising the acid first, it would quickly corrode again. The baking soda keeps it clean and shiny. Swish the wire around in the baking soda water for about 10 seconds. You are done. Shiny new wire ready for soldering, and conducting.

Outside of the LR bubble, you solder heavy stuff. Use rosin or plumber's flux for the heavy stuff. Shrink-wrap.

Accepted practice on most modern cars for 30+ years. Inside the LR Bubble you'll hear words of 'crimp'. These words are blanket-minded without mind to application or context. Well enough for low current, stranded wire to spade / Lucar /bullets - me? were there's no vibration, I solder those too

To and from a battery, to 'crimp' is hogwash/ a lash-up/ for Whoopsies - or all three. Cars didn't start in the 60s/70s. Crimp to heavy current starter and charge cables was one of the reasons.

Blow-lamp , Rosin, plumbers flux ; shrink-wrap etc at the ready.