Battery cable repair update
Last
year I posted on how we repaired
a battery cable on the golf cart with a 2 dollar copper connector
and saved a little money.
I don't think I got the
connector crimped good enough and it may have contributed to the battery
terminal melting.
The pre-made cables are just
a few dollars more than the replacement connector, but at the time it
seemed like a good short cut that would save a trip to the store.
I'd say our crimping tool
wasn't made for those large connectors. If I had it to do over again I
might have used a table vice to squeeze the connector better, but any
future cable problems will wait till we can get the proper pre-made
cable.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Trying to be cheap can be very expensive! So far, you got off lucky. Electrical fires can be very hard to put out. Lead/acid battery fires are not nice. You can call me overly cautious, but I'd rather not have to worry if the EV I'm driving is about burst into flames.
My advice: don't buy too much stuff. But if you do, buy good quality. In the end you'll save time, money and worries. See Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice.
There are some good tips on how to make your money last at early retirement extreme (also has permaculture links) and Mr. Money Moustache.
I'm slowly learning the high price of certain short cuts, but sometimes it pays off in a good way.
We also like to experiment with new materials and techniques as a form of entertainment as opposed to just saving time and money.
I guess the balance is learning how to estimate if a short cut will take more time and money than the more conventional approach. Sometimes we guess wrong, but it usually ends up teaching us something about the process that we can apply to future decisions.
There is a saying that I first heard in German; Erfahrung ist die Summe aller Misereignisse meaning "experience is the sum of all failures".
It is so true. Of course when the failure is really embarassing (been there, done that) I sometimes have a hard time appreciating that I learned something.