SLU-70 Lugs

[eugenebrooks]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

We used the lugs with #6 welding cable and had no problems at all. So, I guess they are not really that bad afterall. Certainly a lot easier than to solder on terminals. Getting heat to stay in something that large is not easy.

We had no problems at all with our SLU-70 lugs, here is how we handled them.

* We dissasembled them and carefully cleaned them to prepare for plating.
* We soaked all of the parts for a half hour in a tin plating bath.
* We carefully stripped 6 gauge rubber insulated welding cable to a length that supported full engagement in the lug.
* We tightened the lug on the wire until it could not be made tighter.
* We then lightly clamped the wire, not the lug, in a vice in order to not bleed too much heat away from the lug when soldering.
* We soldered the wire to the lug where it was clamped, and the screw where it went into the threads.
* After cooling, we cut/ground any excess screw away to make it easier to insulate with heat shrink, removing any hazard associated with the stickout of the screw.
* We applied 7/8 inch heat shrink in the proper color.
* The lugs have a 1/4 hole, and the hole in the batteries is for a #10 screw. We backed up a aviation quality (AN) #10 bolt and nut with hardened washers, to avoid any tendency for this connection on the batteries to loosen.
* We insultated battery connections, and the bolt on the fuse box, with electrical tape.

Nope, we had no problems with the SLU-70 lugs at all!
Lots of build hours went into making them trouble free.

We would much rather have picked up a solid copper lug with the proper hole diameter for the fuse box (1/4"), or the battery (#10), crimped it on with the hex crimping tool designed for the lug, and them slid on a piece of heat shrink just a little bigger than the wire. This would have taken only a few seconds...

Hopefully, that is what we will be doing next year!