[NickD]

Not a new one, but the old one I recently replaced with a new one.

This is the ground end instead of crimped bare copper wire, completely soldered.

View attachment 169346

On the clamp end, drilled a 5/16" hole and with a propane torch completely filled the cavity with a good solder flow. Also a smaller hole on the other side to make sure that cable was completely saturated with solder.

View attachment 169354

Running a controlled current of 60 amperes the voltage drop between the terminals is 14.7 mv, but most important, should stay this way for a very very long time. Now if Chevy would only do this, crimping bare copper wire was and is always a very bad idea. Call this post production work at the owner's expense.

 

[Robby]

You and I will both be pushing up daisies before you need to install that thing Nick......nice job though.....hang it in the garage as a trophy maybe?

Rob

 

[Jim Frye]

Hang it in the garage in case the new one fails.

 

[ChevyGuy]

Hang it in the garage in case the new one fails.

Which will guarantee the old one will last the life of the car.

 

[Jim Frye]

Which will guarantee the old one will last the life of the car.

And if it were mine, I'd forget where I hung it!

 

[brian v]

U ' s guys do realize that Nick put IT on his Cruzen right !

GM does not build cars no more . GM builds Pieces of Cars !

 

[NickD]

Got to thinking way back of my 62 years of vehicle ownership, this to the best of my recollection is the first time I ran into a problem like this.

Which proves for years, the automotive industry knew how to make a cable, but somebody forgot when it came to the Cruze.

Now that I know what the problem is, can pull the new one, just drill a smaller hole on the bottom of the new connector and load it with solder.

Measuring the size of the old battery clamp, actually should have been used on the positive side, that terminal is 50 mils larger in diameter. But it looks like these new kids didn't know this.

Sure made a lot of progress over the years, days are gone using a log log slide rule for working out long equations, but nobody wanted to pay me two bucks an hour to do this, so had to learn how to use a CAD simulation program. It did all the math.

But with these new kids, never went through this where you really had to think. So I often made the comment, these new kids didn't have enough brains to replace a burnt out light bulb without running a simulation program first.

These new mechanical engineers don't even know what a screw looks like, either tack weld it, crimp it, or snap it together. Easy for production, but murder on the guys that have to work on this crap.

 

[brian v]

Sure does keep the machinists busy with all of these new fangled concepts of a lock that breaks upon impact from a screw driver when the temps go down to zero ..

Tooling is where the money is and always has been NICK ..

 

[NickD]

Just had to bring up cold temperatures. 04 Cavalier wasn't too bad, only two wires for the speaker door, wife wanted remote entry, so had to add two more wires. And while I was at it, have a roll of pretinned 16AWG neoprene test lead wire, stays flexible even under the coldest temperatures. So replaced the speaker wires as well.

Not so with the Cruze, has a ton of wires going into the doors, and using cheap plastic for insulation. So when its cold, I open and close those doors very slowly.

Actually I wanted to buy another coupe, only two doors to worry about instead of four. With our grandkids, perfer to use my Supra with good old fashion lap belts, a struggle to put these in with the Cruze, also have a bar in the rear for that top strap. Release the seat back latch on either side of the Supra, seat back goes forward and slides to the front effortlessly, so no problems in strapping them in.

Tooling, are you even familiar with the latest versions of AutoCad, open your print, push a button, and controls a numerical controlled machine. Go home, and when you come back in the morning, its done.

Even way back in the early 70's designed an automatic camshaft grinder, no more skilled machinist, just a kid smart enough to put a blank in and pus a button, hang around, well others to look at, when it was done, take out the ground one, and put another blank in. Been awhile, but would think to day they replaced that kid with a robot.

 

[gmwilkes]

Tooling by hand still has its place. There are countless jobs where replacement parts need to be reverse engineered and made by hand to replace on machines, where it would take 6 times that to do by computer.

 

[NickD]

Ha, still have my little machine shop that is all done by hand, even turning the handles.

 

[theonlypheonix]

These new mechanical engineers don't even know what a screw looks like, either tack weld it, crimp it, or snap it together. Easy for production, but murder on the guys that have to work on this crap.

I believe this NEW technological advancement is called DFM/DFA which = 6 Sigma products... NOT !! I think these new engineers should spend 10 years internship in the shop before being allowed to do new designs.

 

[ChevyGuy]

My brother used to work in the shipyard. He told me that he had to convince a newly minted EE that you needed a complete circuit for current to flow.

Having been though that program myself, I think I know why - a lot of classes on individual trees. Not a whole lot on putting them together into a forest. Since I grew up playing with electronics, I had the framework to fit the new knowledge together.