Electrical Connectors

[RaMoore]

Not, to make this thread overly complicated but, it's important to not use ring style connectors on the Jaguar motor controllers.

The screws for the (+/-) In and the (+/-) Motor connections should not be fully removed. These are special "captive terminal screws" and when fully removed, or is the threads are crossed it can leave small metal fragments to roam about inside the jaguar leading to possible failure.

I'm not sure, but I don't think that the captive terminal screws issue applies to the black jaguars, but of course cross-threading still can be an issue.

MDL-BDC FA Report (2009 Season) Page 8

Like Foster suggested, hooks are a pretty cool alternative to rings. You can also buy premade hooks, and you never have to go find the stupid screw you took out and misplaced when trying to get a ring terminal on...

Andersons are absolutely worth it, but you really do need to bite the bullet and buy the best crimp tool you can. It made me sick to spend the money on the nice ratcheting one but it's been worth every penny.

Andersons can be a huge reliability improvement for your electrical connections. The way they are made they have a number of nice feature:

• When putting them together, the contacts "wipe" each other off giving a cleaner surface
• They are unisex - so you don't have to manage two sets of inventory for male and female
• Connectors "dove-tail" together allowing you to make custom wire groupings, and have less wire wrangling to do
• The metal contacts inside the connectors are "springy" so when they are put together they exert a positive force towards the other contact making a more robust connection

The color coding is also great to have. If you keep up with it, you can easily identify when motor you're unplugging (even in a really tight space) and it's very hard for someone in a hurry accidentally plug something in backwards.

Adding Andersons to the ends of all your motors (before the wires run too far into bundles) makes for very very easy and painless motor and motor assembly swaps, but adding any connector just because your wire is too short is probably just lazy.

As long as you have a good crimper the only other thing to watch out for is if you reuse your your connectors or change the housing color, the contact can get bent slightly and is will not lock over the metal tongue in the housing. The result is that the contact will try to back out of the housing when mated and is a bit hard to see if you're not looking for it.