Adding an Extention to a Fish Finder power cable

[BulkCarrier]

OK I need a bit of help

What's the best way of making the FF power cable longer ?

Do I do it with connector ? and  do you get special salt water connectors ?

Do you solder and heat shrink it ?

DO you use a special kind of cable ?

Hope you guys can help.

Cheers Rudolph

 

[tkei]

Best way is with electrical crimps and then heat shrinking the while lot. A BIT OF SOLDER INT HE CRIMP JOINT ALSOA GOOD OPTION. YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE THE CONNECTION IS A GOOD ONE. aS FOR WIRE, BUY SILICONE WIRE. oRDINARY COPEPR WIRE WONT LAST AROUNS SALT WATER. ITS NOT CHEAP BUT WORTH IT. (sorry I wasnt shouting)

 

[Johan]

The best way to join the cable is by soldering and heatshrinking. The end where you connect to the supply is where you want to extend as to keep your connectors on the other end in tact. Even if that means having to loosen cable ties, ect to move the cable out....that is the correct way of doing it and it pays off vs cutting off a connector and then having to sit with a joint out in the open.

Any type of cable will do since you will make a air tight connection. If the cable at question is going to be in the sun or exposed to petrol or oil just make sure it is resistante to those element. If it is running inside a console or conduit them any cabtyre, flex or speaker cable of the right diameter will do.

In this pictures I join a multicore to a two core cabtyre. Ignore the other cables as yours will probably only have two cores.

Cut the cables so that the joints will be at different lengths. Slide on the heatshrink before you twist and join them.

 

[Johan]

Solder the joints by heating the cable and then applying solder wire to the wire (not the iron) Carefull not to let the heatshrink shrink of the heat of soldering.

 

[Johan]

Slide over heatshrink onto joint

 

[Johan]

Shrink with a heat gun.

 

[Johan]

Do the same on the other side and then put a larger piece of heatshrink over the whole joint so that it covers a part of the cable isolation at both cables as well. In this case it is just enough, you can even take a longer piece. This is one of the cases where longer is better. It keeps the connection sealed and prevents corrosion.

 

[Johan]

Shrink it.

You will see that the joint looks ugly. What I normally do is to either put two pieces of heat shrink over just the length of the exposed cable before I put over the longer piece of shrink. Or wrap some insulation tape over the cables before the heatshrink. This fills up the space where the isolation used to be and if done right will make an invisible and strong joint.

 

[Johan]

When joining cables always twist so that you have an inline (top) joint and not like the one on the bottom. The top joint is flexible and will allow movement without breaking off. Also allows you to slide heatshrink over

 

[BulkCarrier]

Thanks for the help.
I even got some nice pictures . Bargain

 

[Dingleberry]

From what I have seen, transducer cables have foil sleeves around each wire. I supposed that this is to eliminate noise. You might want to look into that.

 

[Fishton]

tkei - thanks for the tip on the drop of solder on the spade clips. Excellent idea!!

johan - you put in a lot of effort to help a guy out there, well done.

 

[BulkCarrier]

Never cur a transducer cable. You will never get it right again without prof help.

My problem is with the power cabl. The transducer cable is long enough.