How To Make/Crimp MC4 Connectors For Solar - With Or Without Special Tools

what's up youtube this is LDS Reliance today I'm going to show you how to crimp on your own mc4 connectors for solar now I'm going to warn you ahead of time for those of you with short attention spans this is a little bit longer than my normal videos but I wanted to make sure that everybody understood step-by-step how to do this the right way okay so we've got our wire stripped back about an inch and so the connectors come with female alright and male plastic parts like this they go together like this and then there will also be male and female metal parts to go together like this so we want one of each to make our connectors and I'm going to do one with without the right tools and one with the right tools to show you both both ways to do it so first we'll do it with just regular pliers or you could do this with wire strippers so let's start with the male side of the black plastic and we're going to want the female side of the metal connectors so we're going to take the female part of this and slide it over the crimped wire and you want these little these little wings these little flaps down here to go down to the edge of the insulation and there's a lot of room in there for the for the wire so don't don't be shy with putting wire in there and so what you have to do if you're not using the right tool it's going to be hard for me to do this on camera but you want to fold these down crimp them down on to the wire one at a time get the first one down nice and tight and then flip it over and do the other flap on top and again you want it to be you want it to be circular you want it to be nice and tight so that it will fit inside the black plastic piece so it looks something like that now obviously is a little loose I'm having a hard time doing this on camera but keep push keep crimping it down until it's nice and tight okay once you're happy with with it being nice and tight you take the male part of the mc4 connectors and separate it now there's going to be a black a rubber gasket in there so make sure that you keep that facing the right way and then slide that part over the metal connector like so and then you take the metal connector and you push it up inside you want it to go all the way into these little fins at the bought at the back so you push it all the way in until you basically it can't go any further and you see if you look in sorry the camera is having hard time focusing on things okay so if you look at the end there if you can see if it will focus you'll be able to see the metal there at the end needs to be almost to the edge of the black plastic and then you take the end piece and you twist it on there and now it's going to take a lot of force without the right tools but you may want to put a piece of plastic or cloth over that and use some channel lock pliers or something to get enough torque you don't want any gap in between there you don't know what you do not want to see the threads in there needs to be flush so tighten that down as best you can and that's what it look like when it's done the gasket will be nice and sealed there at the back to prevent moisture from getting in and there will not be any visible gap in between these two pieces and you'll be able to like I said you'll be able to see the metal connector on the inside almost all the way to the end now we'll do the other side with the right tools okay so we strip the wire again to about an inch or so given us plenty of room then we take the other metal connector that we have left over and flip it on there again so that the little fins on the end the little tabs go all the way to the plastic sheath and then we're going to take our special tool which is a giant crimper tool has these positive stops here at the end where you put the metal connector inside of it and then it has these these parts right here that clamp down so what we do is we take the piece that we just slid on there and we're going to put it let's see which one this one is the smaller one so you put it in there until it reaches the back that positive stop back there and then at the front you've got to make sure that the little metal tabs go inside the part that's going to crimp down I don't know all the terms for these pieces I'm sorry I just know how to use the thing so as you crimp down this will pinch it all together really tightly okay so you get it in there like this again the sheath is just barely at the end and then you just like with any other crimpers you just clamp down real tight so then you've got it and tightly crimps down there so we're going to take our female part our female a black piece separate it from the the grommeted part just like we did on the other side put this through so it goes up there it kind of pops and if this will focus properly you'll be able to see down that hole and you'll see that it's popping out that the metal connector is protruding from the back there which is important so then we get this on there a couple finger tight and we're going to get our next special tool which is two plastic wrenches these are identical and it doesn't matter which one you use on which but you put one down here on this piece and then put the other up here on this piece and then you can twist them real easy this is real so much easier than doing it with channel locks or anything else really really easy to use so and those are like four bucks for the for that special tool there you go you got a perfectly connected mc4 connectors again and then so what we can do is we can take both sides focus in camera and they're really usually really snug and that's that's fine you don't want these to be so we lose but they'll pop like like hopefully you heard that it snaps when they're in there and I mean this is this is watertight this is a really really good good connection so they're really hard to get apart to sometimes but anyway that shows you how to make mc4 connectors if you've never done it before it's really pretty easy once you've done it once you'll be a pro anyway thanks for watching guys hopefully that video was helpful to some of you if you want other how-to and DIY videos on solar and other topics hit subscribe

Channel: LDSreliance

Views: 289,304

Keywords: mc4, make your own mc4 connectors, crimp your own mc4, how to crimp mc4, mc4 connector crimping, mc4 crimping, diy mc4 crimping, mc4 connectors, mc4 connector, mc4 solar connector, diy mc4, installing mc4 connectors, crimp, wire, diy solar, how to, solar connector, connect wires, crimping, diy, self reliance, do it yourself, solar panel, solar wire, mc 4, solar wiring, solar panel wiring no one tells you about, how to install mc4 connectors, put on mc4 ends, renogy

Id: _r2O8U5qzcc

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2017