Electrical Pins and Terminal Tools

Whenever you're working on your classic car, you're going to run into a case where you're going to need to be able to pull wires out of electrical terminals like this distributor here. In order for me to replace the pickup that's inside, I have to actually take this terminal off so I can pull it through the housing. But in order to do that I need to release these pin tools. And you know, also the common one is like the regular blade-type terminals that most cars have in several places or even your steering column electrical connector. And you know, these can be a little challenging but if you have the right tools, in this case I have I've got a set of terminal tools that, you know this is EWK, it's not a name-brand, I think I paid less than $20 for the whole set, but just having a set of these, you know they also sell them a little bit smaller that'll fit on a keyring but you know, having a set you can actually get in and take these terminals apart.

We'll start with this pin-tool and to remove a pin, you know the pin-type plug, they make a tool that is basically a hollow tube that has a spring inside. And you kind of slide that down on top of the pin and you might have to wiggle it around a little bit and then that pushes out the terminal and you can release these. There's basically a little barb on the pin itself. Sometimes when you actually release the barb when you release the pin, the barb gets kind of flattened out if you've got to, you know, insert that back into a plug just grab like a razor or something, pull that tab out just a little bit so it catches again. The next one we're going to take a look at is just this typical blade-type and, again they make, it almost looks like a screwdriver just a thin, flat type of blade that slides in and releases the tang.

You can see the tang on the connector here that kind of sticks up and that catches the plastic and holds it in there typically so it's just a matter of releasing that. And one of the ones that most guys get really frustrated is the steering column harness, this is a flat plug and it kind of works a little different than most and if you look at the plug itself there's little grooves along the one edge and those little grooves are where this tool actually inserts. And we just kind of push in and it releases. And what it is, is on these connectors here, the hook that actually catches is on the side of the terminal as opposed to in the middle and the side so that's usually what messes up a lot of guys is they think they're used to seeing the blade-like connectors where it's on the side but this one, it's in a little different location. You know, a lot of times if you're changing from one steering column to another or if you're trying to retrofit like a GM column to a non-GM car, you know you may have to move these wires around to fit your harness so it's a good idea to know how to be able to release these wires without damaging your flat plugs.