Do you really need tinned wire and lugs?

[BlackHeron]

Originally Posted by double u

"...overheat, the number one cause of wires going all black inside..."
our SSB-receiver antennawire taped to the backstay? was all black inside..!

RF is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. Plus these antenna feedlines are often carrying quite a bit of current and DO get quite hot. I've seen more than one boat where there was no feedline or lower insulator. The tuner went right to the chainplate which was insulated by the fiberglass hull so the feedline was all inside. Just don't touch the backstay when the HF radio was in operation or you'd get quite the unpleasant surprise.

[BlackHeron]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

Anyone who has played Sparky for a decade or two and had a chance to see wiring age out, probably is in the "tinned" line.

Or not.

I'm a commercial electrician and have worked on a lot of outdoor industrial jobs in harsh conditions that make saltwater seem like a breeze. Ever worked building and repairing the electrical systems in a concrete-mixing plant, a refinery, chemical plant, lime mine, or other open-pit quarry and crushing operation?

I have, and we don't use tinned wire. It's more cost-effective to just upsize the conductors for more life and extra surface area at connections were issues always start. Everything is crimped and greased with anti-ox inside and heat-shrinked with mastic (marine grade) shrink tube and totally sealed.

Tinned wire is only marginally better at corrosion-resistance. If a termination suffers from excessive heat it will still go black and corrode up the wire. The enemy is really heat, and over-sizing conductors deals with this MUCH better than just tinning the wire. We don't care about weight, or size. It's easier to upsize the conduits and upsize the wires. Tinned wire isn't all what it is cracked up to be. Sure it is better, but maybe only 20% more corrosion resistant. Not a magic bullet by any means. Spend the extra cash in upsizing the wires and you'll get much more bang for the buck.

But what do I know? I just do this for a living. Someone who listens to the Ancor marketing blitz probably knows a lot more than me about this, I'm sure. I only went to school for 5 years to learn my trade and spent decades on the job seeing what works and what doesn't.

[hpeer]

The engine control wire n my 2006 Yanmar is NOT tinned.

I wonder how many engine manufacturers use tinned wire?

[knockabout]

yes..

[DeepFrz]

Kaptan wiring went out soon after the Swiss Air crash at Peggy's Cove.

Similar, but not identical to aircraft wiring, boat wiring is somewhat sensitive to weight so tinning rather than over sizing is what is recommended by ABYC. However, most EU builders don't use tinned wire.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by ZULU40

...

Just a few more points,

.......
2/ Circuit breakers to protect wires, fuses to protect devices, blade fuses are ok
3/ Usually codes allow yellow and black for 12v, red and black for 120/240 volt to identify potentially lethal sources. 120/240 should be further protected at distribution points with hard covers denoting ///DANGER///
..............]

A couple more points,

2/ Circuit breakers and fuses - I not sure where you find the distinction stated but it is not universal.

3/ This presumably is a USA color coding. Please remember that there are many many readers of CF who are not USA based. Other countries use different colour coding. For instance, in Australia, 12V DC circuits are almost always red (+) and black (-). Old 240V AC is red (A), black (N) and green (earth) while newer 240V AC is brown (A), blue (N) and green with yellow stripe (earth).

[Greg Mason]

I always prefer the belt and suspenders approach. Tinned wire is better, heat shrink is better, upsizing is better, but beyond a doubt, having a lousy grounding system will cause resistance, heat, black wires and poor efficiency. I hate electrical work, so when I had to redo the wiring when I installed a 200amp alternator, I only wanted to do it once. And so I did.

[BlackHeron]

Originally Posted by Wotname

A couple more points,

2/ Circuit breakers and fuses - I not sure where you find the distinction stated but it is not universal.

3/ This presumably is a USA color coding. Please remember that there are many many readers of CF who are not USA based. Other countries use different colour coding. For instance, in Australia, 12V DC circuits are almost always red (+) and black (-). Old 240V AC is red (A), black (N) and green (earth) while newer 240V AC is brown (A), blue (N) and green with yellow stripe (earth).

That isn't USA color codes. Not sure what it is.

US standard color standards are:

Black/Red or Black/White = low voltage (or at least what laymen call low voltage as electricians call anything under 600v low voltage, where 600v-70kv is medium voltage, and only over 70kv do we call it "high voltage."

120/240v or 120/208v is typically Black/Red/Blue for phase conductors and White for neutral. Green or bare for grounds

277/480v is typically Brown/Orange/Yellow for phase conductors and Grey for neutral.

Green or green with yellow stripe is a ground the country-around (or bare) I know that in Europe they use other weird colors because equipment that comes from there is always weird with the color codes they use.

But in the US the NEC only says that grounds (i.e. grounding conductor) must be green, green with stripe or bare, and neutrals (I.e. grounded conductor) must be White or Natural grey (stripe may be added.) All other color coding is simply traditional. Phone/data color coding is something different and they have a whole scheme that could take its own thread.

On my own boat I used black/red for 12v DC systems. Blue/White for 120v AC, and purple for control wire/metering burdens. Green is for grounding conductors in the AC system as well as bonded structure. Yellow-jacketed wire is audio. NMEA-2k and the VHF coax is all black but that is obviously not power to the trained eye. Really, the only thing to look for on our boat as far as safety is concerned is the blue/white of the 120v AC, but that is all in flexible liquidtight non-metallic conduit and junction boxes. No loose wire or "boat romex" Ancor plastic-sheathed cable in the AC at all.

Most (95%) of the 12v DC is in its own separate raceway as well and the joints are made in watertight sealed boxes except for stuff where that isn't possible like before pigtails of lights, pumps, or other equipment because this stuff was never made high-quality enough where the expectation was to keep all wiring inside conduit and boxes. I tried to use as little Ancor "boat romex" in my boat as possible. Most runs are less than 3' from the junction box to the device it is powering. box connectors are water-tight glands. Wire is strapped within 6" of boxes and every 18" thereafter. The conduit is strapped every 24" max. The bulk of the wiring is individual wires run in conduit between boxes like the gods intended wiring to be run.

[Formosa Scott]

Originally Posted by skipgundlach

Or this:

I know that boat.

[Mike Banks]

Go first class. Use only 6mm tinnned wire in all of your applications for all of your feeder wires. It is not load that causes one wire to go black--if it was so, then both of them would be black. It is caused by direct current--which is the reason your home wires do not need to be tinned. They use AC.

If your insulation is NOT PVC you may get your wires to last a little longer provided they are not insulated with polypropene as some early wiring was--before they found that copper was a catalyst that allowed its decomposition into an oil.

I re-wired all of my vessel except for the bus bars with tinned copper heavy conductors. It cost more--but saved time and ultimately money. I also run all my wiring in rectangular or square openable conduits--a good habit I got from cabling buildings in another lifetime.


It is so much easier to pull in more wires, or to open one of those square conduits to run in extra wires should they be required.

[SURV69]

Thanks for the alternating power thought ... where's my invertor?

I've often wondered if, on a 10' or so run with say 10 wires in a say, 10' tube, what it would be like to put 9 feet ten non-tinned, with the last 1/2 each side soldered to tinned wire, then sealed such that all non-tinned wire would be encapsulated and only tinned wire would exit the tubing?

I know that wire "problems", will never be noticed, but they are anyway.

Besides the "plug" could probably be removable one way or another.

[Jim Cate]

to me, it boils down to:

Tinned wire is no guarantee that corrosion will be eliminated.

Un-tinned wire is no guarantee that it will be affected by corrosion.

Many boats have been historically wired with un-tinned wire and have not had problems from this practice.

Many boat buillders, especially in Europe do not use tinned wire in new construction. They do not seem to suffer frequent problems from this.

Good wiring practice, especially at the terminations, is very important with respect to future corrosion.

Bottom line: tinned wire is fine, but use of un-tinned wire is satisfactory if good practice is followed. The adamant "tinned or else failure" words are a bit excessive.

Jim

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

to me, it boils down to:

Tinned wire is no guarantee that corrosion will be eliminated.

Un-tinned wire is no guarantee that it will be affected by corrosion.

Many boats have been historically wired with un-tinned wire and have not had problems from this practice.

Many boat buillders, especially in Europe do not use tinned wire in new construction. They do not seem to suffer frequent problems from this.

Good wiring practice, especially at the terminations, is very important with respect to future corrosion.

Bottom line: tinned wire is fine, but use of un-tinned wire is satisfactory if good practice is followed. The adamant "tinned or else failure" words are a bit excessive.

Jim

Crikey Jim, what's this... You know better than to bring cold rational intelligent thoughts to a CF thread :big grin:

But I do concur with your post

[Olddan1943]

Originally Posted by Wotname

Crikey Jim, what's this... You know better than to bring cold rational intelligent thoughts to a CF thread :big grin:

But I do concur with your post

Use what you got and be happy you got the stuff to fix it.

[SouthernPride]

Use fiber for data connections. Much cheaper these days and obviously a lot faster.

Other option is to pull backup wires to a separate bus. Worth the work. Use dipit over wire connections. Excellent insulator.

Anything other than data connections use direct connections, shrink tubing, sealed with dipit.

Nothing wrong with a little baking soda bath once a month on the terminals to keep clean.