Technical Copper clad aluminum wire

Okay I'm wiring my car, got the bright idea to look at wire on Amazon. You can buy 6 rolls of wire, 100' each, for like $35. But they all say "copper clad aluminum wire", I've never paid attention to wire, I just go to the parts store and get a roll of wire, but a 25' roll of wire from autozone is around $15. So is this a normal thing? Thanks for the help

 

All I'm wiring is headlights and taillights. And a phone charger lol... the ignition system is all done.

 

Aluminum wire is only about 60% as conductive as the same size copper wire. I wouldn’t use use aluminum wire anywhere on a car.

 

That's good info, I appreciate it. Figured there was a reason for the price.

 

What you are looking for is sometimes called oxygen free copper, I believe.
Copper clad or CCA is not recommended.

 

Somebody has some leftovers from years ago. That stuff was made illegal sometime in the mid to late 70s...

 

Man it's all over Amazon lol, I usually swing by tractor supply and get a trailer harness to do the rear of the car, so I guess I'll just keep doing that lol.

 

The Amazon wire is speaker wire. There isn't much in the electrical category on Amazon that is of the quality I would use on a car.

 

I don't put radio's in my hot rods, but 14 and 16g seems heavy for speaker wire!

 

I put radios in my hot rods, and my drivers are wired with 12ga. The subwoofers are wired with 10ga or 8ga, depending on the supplied wattage.

All high-quality copper.

 

Solid aluminum was banned in residences in 1970. Nobody seems to care about DC stuff.

Copper-clad aluminum wiring is still legal for residences.

 

Not an audio guy, not being a smart ass either, just don't know about car audio. Couldn't hear a radio over the exhaust of anything I build.

 

You can hear my radio at the International Space Station.

 

You can dig around more on Amazon to find real copper, it just costs more. I bought some battery cable size wire by the foot off of eBay a few years ago. Mainly just pay attention to the description when you buy it or if it doesn't say assume it's aluminum.

 

I don't need much wire, I just seen how cheap it was and then seen the aluminum thing so I figured I'd ask before I even considered it. I appreciate the info

 

Hi, Aluminum wire gets a skin on it almost immediately after you clean it. This oxide becomes an insulator. If you use Aluminum wire there is a special coating you must use because the wire will oxide and relax after you tighten the connector and then you end up with a high resistance joint. As some say they outlawed it for residential home wiring many years ago because of the preparation involved . It is used with large conductors but again a special process to clean and tighten it. Famous night club burned down to the ground many years ago because of this. Hope this helps.

 

Lloyd , being a fireman you must have seen "the towering inferno"....the fire started with aluminum wire

 

Not today when the trunk is full of base speakers and future car owner who will have tinnitus when they are 45…

 

aluminum wire was not banned in 1970 as it was used up till 1975. One reason was they changed the alloy of the aluminum so it didn't stretch because of heat cycles. Most of the problems with the wire was poor work habits

 

Had a set of wires disintegrate after less than a year on my boat trailer. Yes it gets dunked, but the previous set lasted 15 years. I make sure every wire I use now is copper. you can even feel the flex difference

 

Yeah I believe that 1974 was when it was banned from residential construction. Mainly because of manufactured housing fires. Like said above, the connections become loose. But I had never paid attention to the wire I have bought from the parts house, didn't know if it was the same stuff.

 

If the material you use requires good work habits to prevent fires, and another material isn't so picky, it's wise to ban the aluminum wire....

Anyways, you can probably use the copper coated aluminum wire for your automotive wiring needs, and you likely won't die from it. Weighs less, costs less, use a size larger to handle the same current as copper wire. And make sure it's flexible enough...don't use solid wire in cars....

 

Yeah it said that it was stranded, who knows how flexible it is though. It also states it's not rated for exterior use, plus it's not sized by awg standards. I read more about it, obviously not a good product.

 

Different jurisdictions, product type, etc. Not worth arguing about.

Look at the insulation temperature rating and the strands. Much of our stranded “machine tool wire” didn’t have the number of strands for high vibration in autos. It wasn’t that flexible. Under hood temperatures can exceed the common 90 degree C ratings. Given your labor and the possible results of failure, the wire and terminals are the cheapest part.

There’s good or cheap auto wire out there. Not much good cheap stuff.

 

GM dabbled in Aluminum wiring in the 1970's. I had a few wrecks from the big floods in Penn. at the time I was repairing where I had intermittent connections. Turns out the Aluminum interacted with the wiring harness jackets they were in. Certain colors in the harness caused the aluminum to start to oxide then became brittle. Those flood cars were a PITA. Most bounced back for electrical problems. Thank god I was the ghost mechanic on them not the sellers!!

 

That's a fake gimmick foisted on us by the audio industry. It may possibly be important in computer electronics but nowhere else. There was a guy by the name of Julian Hirsch who was the head reviewer at Stereo Review in the '60s - '80s who put up a $10K bond to be paid to any 'high end cable/interconnect' manufacturer who could prove by a double-blind listening test that they had a superior product. They could pick the gear, the source material and even the judges, but the actual test was done by a neutral party. The alternate speaker cable was common lamp cord. He never had to pay off...

That was only part of the problem. As Lloyd mentioned, mobile/double-wide fires were common and were generally caused by the vibration from moving the homes from the factory to their location loosening connections (well, the Zinsco panels favored by the manufacturers didn't help). Plus you needed special devices to terminate the wire, standard ones with copper-only rated connections caused additional issues. The copper-cladding was the hoped-for solution which reduced but didn't eliminate the problems, they finally banned the smaller sizes altogether. Aluminum wire is still very commonly used, but I believe #6 is the smallest size allowed, and no non-stranded at all. The copper-cladding disappeared with the small sizes.

And any time you use aluminum, you need to increase the size (usually two sizes) to get the same ampacity as copper.

 

I've never bought from these people, but it looks like the same stuff everybody else uses.

Printed Wire by the Foot – Kwik Wire | Electrify Your Ride

 

I just had the wife order me a kit. Same one I used on the 57 wagon. Well worth $32

 

All of my audio equipment contains a computer. My head unit runs Android 12.

 

I can see if dealing with digital signals a ultra-clean signal path would be important. But speaker outputs and speakers are analog, not digital and you'll be hard-pressed to find any speaker without some sort of servo control that can boast of distortion levels of under 5% across it's full response, and it's even rare there. Same thing goes for any analog connection using a RCA jack. He tested those too (pre-digital days) with the same results. You need highly-sensitive lab equipment to even measure the advertised differences if any, the human ear isn't that sensitive.