Crimping Packard 56 Series Terminals
 

Never had much luck making nice looking crimped terminals with the simple crimping tool I have had for years. For general purpose, I was okay with my amateur crimps.

I'm looking to crimp some Packard 56 Series terminals, male and female, with the matching shells so I bought a Meterk ratcheting crimping tool. I'm hoping for a good looking result.

Wonder if anybody has used this tool to crimp the old school Packard terminals and knows which of the die blocks I should use.

I don't have a large supply of terminals so I am hoping not to waste any with test runs, like to get it right the first time.

For the female 14-16 ga. terminal, it looks like I can crimp the bare wire wings with the JX-1601-2546 die with the terminal in the 6 mm opening, then reset the terminal to crimp the wings over the wire insulation.

I'm using 16 ga. wire.

The die is not stepped so I figure I shouldn't try to crimp both sets of wings in one step.

But the male terminals look to be a bigger challenge because of the little tabs at the rear of the terminal. Looks like I won't be able to crimp the wings in 2 steps. But I'm not sure I will be able to successfully crimp both sets of wings in a single step with the die choices I have.

I'm thinking the same die with the 6 mm opening could work for the 14-16 ga. male terminals but I also need to crimp some male terminals for 10-12 ga. wire, the wings on these terminals are larger and don't seem to fit in the die.

Some pix of my stuff to follow.

Anybody experienced with the Packard terminals that can offer advice on how to do this to produce a good looking and tight crimp?

Here's a pic of the tool, die, and terminals and another with the die installed.

Pix of female terminal in the die, showing front wings in die, rear wings sticking out of die at rear, sorry it is blurry, hope you get the idea..

I don't have a ratcheting tool. I have a manual crimper. I thought the crimper would do it all in one squeeze but it does not. Perhaps I am doing it wrong...
I found it is a two step process that took some wiggling for the larger terminals as you noted, and for those my success rate was lower.. Buy a few extras.. I bought a few times from the very nice lady here:
repairconnector.com
They have a wide selection.

Pix of the smaller male terminal in the die and side by side showing the larger male terminal next to the smaller. Larger won't fit in this die. What to do?

All advice appreciated!

I never had much luck with the ratcheting crimper on those terminals. I re-wired my whole car with a new harness and had to crimp every single one and ended up using one of these type crimpers. It took at least 2 crimps per terminal, but I got much better results.

http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...4&d=1531011044

https://www.americanautowire.com/pro...rimping-tools/

John, see if this video helps.

Helps a lot, thanks! I'm away all week but when I return I'll start crimping. If it turns out nice, I'll post some pix.

Why is it that the male terminal is hard as rock and female is of brass colour and crimps real easy. I bought some croppers form Snap on
for this purpose and not overly happy when crimping the male terminal.