Hydraulic wire crimper

[bobofthenorth]

For the bus nut who doesn't have quite everything:
Harbor Freight Crimper

I saw that recommended on a newsgroup that I follow.  I don't know whether it is any good but the guy that recc'd it is no fool.  At that price it wouldn't have to work for long to pay for itself.

[Len Silva]

That is absolutely dirt cheap.  A quality tool such as the T&B TBM14 is around $2000.00  http://www.kvmtools.com/product_info.php?products_id=6391&language=en

That is without any dies which run about $165.00 per set.

I don't think I would even bother with that one.

[bevans6]

That sure beats my vee block and dull chisel!

Brian

[James77MCI8]

I think for the money it would be fine for the do-it-yourselfer

[gus]

This HF stuff is OK for the occasional use but not for full time professional use, at least this is my experience and I have a bunch of them.

[Dave B]

I bought the HF hydraulic crimper when I was doing battery cables.  I found out that what the advertisement and box means when it says "crimps 00 wire" should be taken literally.  The largest die is the actual size of a 00 wire, but not the correct size for crimping a 00 wire connector.  The 00 die will crimp a #6 wire connector.  I did a search and found that others have had this problem and contacted HF with no results.  The dies go down to #12 wire, but are so small that they are of no use for crimping connectors.

It worked fine on #6 and I saw some discussion on getting the small size dies milled out to work on the larger wire.  As always, buyer be ware!