ckessel
Well-Known Member
One of the gems I gleaned at the SEMA show was some information about wire crimpers from American Autowire. I installed one of their harness packages on a customers 67 Camaro[ had to wear gloves so I wasn't contaminated] at my main place of employment. The Pertronix crimper worked somewhat ok on the terminals, better than the universal ones most commonly found, but still had a tendency to crush the terminal. I had to pre curl the tabs on the terminals to start the crimping otherwise they would get crushed from the get go. The Pertronix unit does work pretty good on other stuff, even plug wires but you need to pre curl the terminal a little so you don't crush it. The American Autowire rep told me they had specifically designed their unit for the terminals used in that period which covers our cars. He had an electrical background and was knowledgeable about the specific tools of the trade. Tyco makes one but is brutally expensive and out of my reach. The AA units I purchased from Summit. The yellow one is for individual crimps and the blue is for the terminals that have two wires side by side. Blue one may be for 14 and smaller, yellow 10-12 but have not verified yet. I did some crimps at work yesterday with the blue and am impressed. I did not have to curl the tabs and it did an awesome job without crushing. I found you need to do it in three stages with the large opening as the 1st stage on the inner tabs, 2nd stage is the smaller opening on the unit giving the 1st crimp the final and the 3rd stage crimping down the tabs on the insulation. Here are some photos.