[TR] Lucas's looseness limits lighting?

[Chris Kantarjiev]

> Wouldn't it be simpler, and  more  efficient in the long run to just 
> replace those lousy bullets with modern insulated spade connectors? 
> You wouldn't have to do it all at once, just replace the bad ones as 
> they failed, or pulled apart, broke, burned, gave up, or just plain 
> did not work.

I'm not a fan of hand-made spade connections. To do this well, you still 
need a good-quality ratcheting (expensive) crimp tool (not the cheap 
unit that comes with the $15 assortment). Unless you shop carefully, the 
insulation on the connectors has a tendency to crack when crimped, and 
the lifetime is short. The same moisture issues exist. I don't really 
see that it "fixes" anything.

The Lucas bullet design is really quite good, when used correctly - the 
bullets by their nature have built in vibration support, because the 
insulated portion of the wire goes up into the bullet and forms a solid 
mechanical junction at the end of the wire. You don't have to strip the 
wire to length as carefully as with the spade connectors to get a good 
joint, because you can trim the bare section after the crimp if you got 
it too long.

Here's my favorite discussion of crimp vs solder:

http://www.dimebank.com/misc/soldered_connections.html