Showerthought: I've been crimping my RJ31X jacks wrong for ten years.

Was on a service call in Tempe last week. Customer's phone line kept dropping the alarm signal. Saw their old installer used a different crimp pattern. Tried it. Signal strength jumped from 30% to 98% on the panel. My go-to method was crushing the wires. Anyone have a good diagram they trust for the 8-pin jack?

2 comments

2 Comments

reesewilliams7d ago

Okay, "crushing the wires" is the key part here. That's exactly what I was doing too, just mashing them flat with the crimper. Are you saying the better method is more about a clean fold and crimp that doesn't deform the whole plastic block? I've got a cheap tool and I bet that's half the problem. What did the different pattern look like, was it just the order of the wires or the actual physical crimp action?

the_evan7d ago

Yeah exactly, the cheap crimper just smashes everything into a sad little metal pancake... it's brutal. The good one I borrowed had a two-step thing, first it folded the metal flap down neatly over the wire, then a second press closed it tight without wrecking the plastic. The pattern was different too, like the teeth that did the crimping were shaped to match the connector, not just a flat surface. Total game changer for getting those wires to actually stay put.