The connectors that Schmidt use for their hub connections, and that Schmidt, Busch & Müller and others use for headlight to taillight connections, are designed to be crimped to the wires, not soldered. If you solder the wire, you create a stress riser where the solder ends. In the case of the hub connections, this is a huge problem since riders frequently remove the front wheel of their bike. Every time you manipulate the connector you can flex the wire at the stress riser, resulting in the wire breaking. By crimping the connectors, you have one set of crimps around the insulator, which takes all of the stress, and another set just on the conductor.
I'm sure that if you're very careful and talented with a soldering iron, as I'm sure Jan Heine is, you can limit the flow of solder up the wire so that it doesn't reach the insulator crimp. But why take the risk of getting it wrong, since proper crimping with the proper tool always results in a permanent connection? And even if you do make a clean solder just at the end of the wire, without a proper crimp of the insulator, you're still depending on just the solder connection between the conductor and the connector, so it can still fail since the crimp at the insulator is bound to loosen up with repeated installing and removal of the wheel. Soldering works great on circuit boards, because the user of the circuit board isn't frequently manipulating the wires. If you use needle nose pliers you can't get the crimp on either the conductor or the insulator tight enough to ensure that it won't slip off. I had plenty of complaints from users in the first couple of years I was importing these hubs and lights, when I didn't understand the issue, and was using needle nose pliers to crimp connectors onto customer's wires. Duh. Then I smartened up and got a proper crimping tool directly from Schmidt. We no longer get any complaints about connectors sliding off the wires. Please see these pages about wiring on my website. http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/wiringinstructions.php http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/Co-Axial_Wiring.php Someone mentioned preferring Shimano's connector to Schmidt's system. I like the Shimano connector and agree that it can be easier when making the initial installation on the bike. But, should you lose the connector while fixing a flat tire at midnight on a 1200k brevet with the mosquitos whining in your ears, you might wish you had a spare. PJW On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 12:50 AM, IanA <[email protected]> wrote: > If you don't use the specific crimping tool, it is a good idea to solder, > before crimping. Maybe Anton from Velolumino will weigh in with his > excellent approach. Also, this article by Jan is highly instructive > https://janheine.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/wiring-a-light-for-a-son-generator-hub > > Needle nose pliers work OK, as long as you are careful not to crush the > connector, Having the crimping tool would be a nice luxury. > > Ian A/Canada > > On Sunday, May 15, 2016 at 2:57:34 PM UTC-6, Lungimsam wrote: >> >> Specific tool is near impossible to find in stores or online, unless 60$+ >> bucks. >> What do you all use as alternatives? >> Or must one order the tool online? > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Peter White -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
