Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

if anyone would like to resell Lucas connector pliers (bullet connector crimping tool) I would be very interested in purchasing !

They are readily available new. Example
https://www.autoelectricsupplies.co.uk/product/477

There are a number of threads about this.

If you want to do the job properly, and not have the bullet fall off after 6 months, you need a tool that produces a 'hexagon crimp' - one crimp on the narrow bit of the bullet to grip the conductor, and one at the base of the bullet to grip the insulation. It is also essential to have the right size bullet to match the size of the cable. You will need multiple sizes of bullets for the Elan given the different cable sizes.

The tool linked to in the above post will be ideal to fit bullet connectors the week before you sell the car.

My new loom was hex crimped as described with maybe 50% reliability.

At every opportunity, I drilled out the bullets and soldered them. Went through quite a lot of small numbered bits, But they don't tug apart.

I figure each refurbed bullet has about $100 embedded labor. John

The genuine tool does a great job as long as you have the correct size bullets for the particular cable. I managed to pick up mine at a classic car show from a specialist vendor. Sorry, I have no plans to part with it. I can confirm that the one in the link above is nowhere near as good as the proper one, I bought one and it’s chucked in amongst the junk in the corner of the garage somewhere as the crimps done with it were not secure.
As an aside, beware of cheap connectors that the bullets go into, they are not all equal!

baileyman wrote: At every opportunity, I drilled out the bullets and soldered them. Went through quite a lot of small numbered bits, But they don't tug apart.

+1 to that. Lucas used to solder them and then some time late 60's early 70's crimping came in.

I think this has been discussed before but I can't find the thread.

The original and the current offering ( pun intended )





John

it is the one with hexagonal crimping (professional) that I am looking for (used) get lucky?

Hexagon ( 6 ) , no , the original Ripaults SSCT1 just has two flats..



the later one I have modified to crimp the full circumference..


John

Cheap one and expensive one, cheap one was a waste of time and money.
Just as an aside, if you really want to you can easily put a blob of solder on the end of the crimped bullet to really secure it, leave the wire fractionally proud and a quick dab of solder with a very hot iron on the brass bullet does work nicely. Tried it but decided it was OTT as I couldn’t pull a properly crimped bullet off anyway. Biggest problem was poor quality connector blocks, there is an article somewhere on here showing the internals of the original ones and the aftermarket ones

" brass " ?,

I tried those but many didn't like to be crimped and cracked , now stick to lead/tin/alloy ? ish and buy the smaller size and drill out ( as previous post ) to fit different gauge wire..

John