Saving a pound using Eric Jones #4 CCA copper clad aluminium wire
http://www.periheliondesign.com./
for 914 with Odyssey PC545 battery mounted aft of baggage bay. It is not just copper plated aluminium wire. Each strand of this multi strand aluminium wire is put inside a copper sleeve, then extruded to make it as one.
http://www.periheliondesign.com./fatwires.htm
#4 CCA is larger in diameter compared to #4 Tefzel, with a conductor diameter of .350" and OD with insulation of .435". You can crimp or solder to standard "for use with copper wire terminals" (or do both crimp and solder like we will be doing to lower any chance of high resistance joint). An interesting point is solder is approx 1/10th the conductivity of copper, thus to not create a connection that will be of higher resistance than the wire itself, hence heat and cool and after a while develope fatigue cracking and high resistance, you need at least ten times the cross section circular mil of the wire in soldered area. Crimping copper to copper first will help with lower resistance to begin with, solder will only lower resistance further even if it is a lousy conductor, it still conducts and there is a lot of surface area in terminals and my buss/bypass.
One downside to aluminium clad wire is it work hardens very easy and the strands are larger than #4 tefzel wire. Thus bend it and it breaks a lot easier. Will pay extra attension to strain relief during install.
Y9-01-01
