crimp connectors

[AWD PSI 10+ year member]

I'm trying to run my power and ground to my amp and I want to use crimp on terminals to connect to the amp. My problem is I can't find any 8ga terminals that will fit the amp connection block. Is it necessary to use these crimp connectors? Looking at the size of the wire and the mounting block on the amp it doesn't look like I'll be able to get 8ga attached without a special connector. I bought a stinger kit but nothing in there works with what I need it to, even the speaker spade connectors were too big so I just soldered the speaker wire onto the speakers. it's an Alpine mrp f300. Thanks for any help.

Click to read more...

 

[AWD PSI 10+ year member]

I just tried attaching the 8ga to the amp and it was messy. I could split the wire strands into two bundles and use the amp screw plate to hold one bundle on each side of the screw, if that makes sense. The smallest 8ga ring connector cannot be modified to fit the amp block. How does everyone attach ground and power leads?

 

[matt3D 10+ year member]

It really depends on the amplifier. For me, I have two amps and they both have terminals for the speaker, power and ground connections, so I just put the wires inside and tightened them down. For non terminal inputs like the ones on your Alpine mrp f300 you can connect the bare wires as well but it will look nicer with a spade connectors. You could sand down the spade terminals on each side to get them to fit if you wanted to use them too. However, remember to use a ring terminal and a big bolt when you ground the amp to your car.

 

[AWD PSI 10+ year member]

For non terminal inputs like the ones on your Alpine mrp f300 you can connect the bare wires as well but it will look nicer with a spade connectors. You could sand down the spade terminals on each side to get them to fit if you wanted to use them too. However, remember to use a ring terminal and a big bolt when you ground the amp to your car.

I really want to use the spade connectors, I couldn't get the bare wire to look neat enough for me. The terminal inputs for power/remote/ground are the same size as the speaker terminals. I cant use a spade connector that fits the terminal for 2 reasons; any spade connector that fits the terminal is too small to accept 8ga wire and if I try and modify any connector big enough to hold 8ga wire there is not enough material to be able to sand down and fit the terminal. What I need is a small spade connector that can hold large gauge wire. The manual for the amp call for 8ga so I'm not sure why it is so difficult to connect. Ring terminal is no problem but I have the same issue connecting the ground to the amp. Why do they say to use a larger gauge wire and still only give us tiny terminals?

 

[AWD PSI 10+ year member]

I found what I was looking for. I was driving past a Fry's Electronics and decided to stop. Here is what I purchased. Monster 200 . The size on my amp was #8, that is what size spade connector will fit, the gauge also happened to be 8 but that is a different measurement, what size wire the spade accepts. this part looks to be a specialty item to car audio because I couldn't find them at any home improvement/auto part stores.