Tag: how to

Chinese Hydraulic Wire Crimper with 4/0 Welding Cable Review

Today I demonstrate my new 16 ton Chinese hydraulic wire crimper that I bought from Amazon. I will be using it with 4/0 (four aught) 100% copper, fine stranded welding cable and per-tinned crimp lugs. I even cut apart the finished crimped fitting to inspect the quality of the crimp connection. I bought this crimper to use on a starting unit for heavy equipment that we were building a few months ago and I was impressed with it’s capability, especially for the low cost of the tool. I figured it was worth sharing my experience with the good people of Garage Topic and youtube. Harbor Freight offers a hydraulic crimping tool also, but it costs more than the tool in this review, and it’s a smaller crimper. The largest wire listed on the Harbor Freight tool is 0 AWG (zero gauge). The cable I am crimping in this review is 4/0 (four aught) which is four sizes larger than 0 AWG. (zero gauge) This 16 ton Chinese crimper comes with 5 sets of dies LARGER than the 4/0 I was crimping. (11 sets of dies in total) This thing is an absolute beast for the price. I should have bought this tool sooner!

YouTube video down below.

I am pretty sure that most of the 16 ton hydraulic crimpers listed on Amazon and eBay are probably from the same factory in China. They are just re-named, or re-branded depending what the private sellers decide to call the product in their Amazon or eBay listings. The unit I purchased from Amazon is called “Goplus”.

This is a picture of the hydraulic crimping tool I purchased:

Goplus 16-Ton Chinese Hydraulic Crimper

PROS:

  • Low cost. I do not remember the exact price that I paid for this crimper but it was considerably cheaper than the Harbor Freight crimper, which is also considerably smaller than this unit. Not to mention, this crimper is WAAAY cheaper than the well known, brand name crimpers that is available on the market.
  • Capability. This crimper comes with eleven hex dies which will cover a wide range of cable and wire sizes. Everything from a wire just large enough that you wouldn’t want to crimp it with a hand crimper, all the way up to cable sizes that your average guy would probably never be working with anyway. Another thought I had was…. the dies are nothing proprietary. They literally look like a square piece of metal with a hex hole punched in the middle, then cut in half to make the die. A handy guy in his home shop could easily make custom dies for this crimper out of a square piece of mild steel, drill a hole, then cut in half. Presto! Instant custom die.
  • Simple and easy to use. This crimper is very easy to use. There is one vale to open and close just like on a hydraulic floor jack, and a handle to pump the hydraulic jaws together. That’s it. (The jaws are spring return) As long as you have the correct size dies installed for the size of cable and fittings you’re using, and you center your fitting in the dies, you really can’t screw up the crimp. Then you just pump the handle until the dies come completely together, so there is no longer a gap between the dies. Done.
  • Complete kit. The crimper comes in a blow mold case, which is not very good quality, but the only thing the case does is hold the tool and dies together while being stored. The case does not affect the functionality of the tool while it’s crimping wire or cables. And besides, for the cost of this tool, I really didn’t expect the case to be great anyway. lol. It also comes with an extra set of o-rings so when the tool develops a leak in the future, you will already have the o-rings to fix the leak….. if the extra o-ring kit isn’t lost by then. lol
  • Quality of crimp. I was very impressed by the quality of the finished crimp. Between the size of dies I was using, and the size of the fittings and cable I was crimping, I was VERY happy with the result of the finished crimp. I used my sawzall to cut a test crimp apart to inspect the crimp quality and it looked perfect to me. See for yourself below:
Freshly cut apart with sawzall to inspect quality of crimp
Same crimp as above but different view.
Finished crimp with adhesive lined shrink tubing

CONS:

  • My number one complaint is die sizing. The numbers on the dies are not inline with any numbers used for wire sizing here in North America, not this part anyway. I’ve been told it’s some sort of metric wire sizing….. which is perfectly fine, but it’s just not very convenient of anyone in North America. You would think if they’re selling millions of these crimper kits here in North America, it wouldn’t be too much trouble to have a different set of dies stamped with AWG sizing. It takes a little trial and error to get the correct size die for your project. I recommend at least one or two test crimps with scrap wire to make sure you get the sizing correct before crimping anything on your project itself. I was mildly upset with the die sizing but then I remembered how much I paid for this crimper kit and I immediately had a smile back on my face. lol.
  • Other than die sizing, and the low quality case, there really is nothing else to complain about with this hydraulic crimping tool.

Conclusion:

I would absolutely recommend this hydraulic crimper to anyone who needs to crimp any wire or cable that is too large to crimp with a hand crimper. It is a complete kit that covers a wide range of wire and cable sizes, it is very easy to use, it gives very high quality crimp results, and is very reasonably priced. The only down side would be if you’re a commercial contractor, who needs to prove that he used certified crimp fittings with a certified crimper, on a commercial job, then this crimper would not be for you. However, if you found yourself in the situation that I just mentioned, you’re probably not reading this review anyway. You would most likely be standing at the city desk of your local electrical supply house picking up that well known, brand name crimper that I mentioned earlier in this post, and paying 60 times (roughly) more than I paid for the crimper in this review.

For the average guy who is looking to crimp heavy gauge welding cable, or battery cables, or even cables for your DIY solar system install, this crimper would be excellent for you.

Thanks for stopping by Garage Topic.

Check out the crimper video on my YouTube channel

How to unlock a car door without keys, the easy way.

I show you an easy way to unlock your car door if you have locked your keys in the vehicle. This is the easiest car door unlocking tool that I have found after working in the automotive roadside assistance / towing industry for almost 3 decades. It is made by Access Tools and is called the RCBM- Remote Control Button Master. It is a long reach grabber tool used to unlock vehicles with vertical door locks. Longer versions of this tool can also be found by various manufacturers that are long enough to reach inside the car or truck and grab interior door handles, etc. In the video I use two air bags, also known as air wedges, or air jacks to help open the door just enough to get the tool inside. These air bags a not 100% necessary. You could also use plastic door wedges, a homemade wooden wedge… or even just a screwdriver if you don’t care about damaging your vehicle. This is a pretty simple process to unlock a door with vertical door locks using this tool. Try not to wedge the door open too far, just enough to get the tool in. And also once the door is unlocked, be sure to remove all wedges and/or air bags before opening the door. This removes all pressure from the door latch and lets the door open smoothly.

This was basically a video demonstration of one specific type of door unlocking tool, that works on one specific type of door lock. I took a lot of heat in the comment section for this YouTube video. If you read the title, and the caption in the thumbnail, you will see this is exactly what I show in the video…. “how to unlock A car without keys”. I do apologize if you found this post and/or video while standing in a parking lot trying to figure out how to get into your car. I REALIZE you do not have this tool in your pocket. I REALIZE this post/video does you NO good while you’re stranded outside of your car. However, this video wasn’t really intended for people in your situation. This was a demonstration of a door unlocking tool for people who work in the automotive industry, who buy tools on a regular basis. YouTube is full of tool review videos and this video is no different.

Again, I’m sorry if you’re locked out of your vehicle and found my tool demonstration video thinking I had a magic solution to unlock your car. Unfortunately, I do not.

I may do a future video/post about other types of door unlocking tools that we’ve used over the years. There were some real weird looking “door tools” that we used years ago that would go inside the door, under the glass, then back up inside the car on the inside of the glass, then wrap back down over the interior door panel and physically move the door lock on the door. The bad part was, if you couldn’t get the car unlocked, you couldn’t get your tool back out…. and I never lost a tool, by the way! lol. Door tools generally worked good on the older cars that had loose doors and door seals but as time went on and doors got tighter, door tools became more difficult to use. Not to mention all the wires and air bags inside modern car doors . Door tools and a slim Jim were all we had back in the day and now those tools are rarely used today.

Be sure to LIKE, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE for more.

Bleed ABS Brakes Like A Pro With an Affordable Scan Tool

I made a youtube video to show how an affordable ABS scan tool can auto bleed ABS brake systems and ABS module just like a pro scanner. You don’t need a 5 or 10 thousand dollar GM Tech2 or Snap On diagnostic scanner (or any other high end vehicle manufacturer specific diagnostic scan tool) to preform an auto bleed on an ABS brake system. https://youtu.be/fUqmBqYIEAE

While searching online to find this affordable solution, I also found a few other low priced ABS scan tools that are supposed to also do an auto bleed. They are, The Foxwell NT630 Plus: And the OTC 3210: Please do your own research to be sure these scanners will work with your vehicle. The Foxwell seemed to be the cheapest, and the OTC was the most expensive. TO ME, the Autel seemed to be the best decision because it wasn’t the most expensive, but at least it was from a company that I had heard of before. OTC is a good, well known brand (Originally from my home state) but because of that, it seems that you are somewhat paying for the name. The Autel MaxiCheck Pro was middle ground for me. After using it to bleed my brakes, I can say that I am very happy with my purchase. I’m sure there are others out there but at the time of my YouTube video, these seemed to be the cheapest three (that I could find) with auto bleed capability.

It’s important to keep in mind that not every make and model of vehicle is capable of performing an auto bleed. The vehicle must have that function programmed into the ECM to begin with. It is the computer (ECM) in the vehicle that is actually performing the function, the Autel MaxiCheck Pro OBDII scan tool (or any other brand of scan tool) is only commanding the vehicle’s computer to run the auto bleed. The Scan tool itself is not doing anything other than commanding the auto bleed function that is programmed into the vehicle’s ECM from the factory. I suggest doing a google search for your make and model to see if your vehicle has the ability to auto bleed the ABS brake system before you buy a scanner.

And just to be clear…. I manually bled fluid from all four wheels before AND after performing an auto bleed with the scan tool. Once the air is moved out of the ABS module, (with scan tool) it must then be physically bled out of the system at each wheel. I did this entire process twice. And another side note: I use the Motive Products Power Bleeder to bleed my brakes. All other forms of bleeding may work eventually, but using a power bleeder (any brand) is absolutely the quickest, easiest and most reliable way to remove air from the brake system…. Your mileage may vary.

Check out my video below on YouTube to see how easy it was to perform an auto bleed on my 2006 GMC Sierra 1500.