Crimp or solder?

[Jim Haseltine]

I know that this is restarting a discussion that was worked to death
sometime ago, but I won't solder any connection on a vehicle - I do,
however, use tinmans solder instead of filler on panel dings.
Many years ago I trained as an electrical engineer. During that training I
was taught that solder was to be used for low power applications on fixed
installations (circuit boards etc) anything else was to be crimped or fixed
with terminal blocks.

Solder enables just about anybody to make a joint, most people use the
solder like glue and end up with a joint that works but is actually pretty
poor.
Just about everybody has a soldering iron and if they haven't they can be
bought for a few quid.

Crimp joints require two things - good quality connectors and a really good
set of crimping pliers - this is what puts people off, they use a pair of
crimp pliers from a GBP5 crimping set an get a cr*p joint which falls apart.

The pliers that I use on auto connections cost GBP45.

Regards,

Jim Haseltine