Wow! We should have made the way to connect the stater wires a separate thread. I always thought soldering was the best connection, took the time to learn to do it properly and prided myself in a well done connection. I spent 20 years in the USAF as an aircraft mech working on C-5 Galaxies. It was 247 feet long, almost a football field. Although desirable, most times we couldn't and didn't run a new wire from nose to tail, also, all wiring was white and the only way to tell what circuit it was was by the number stamped on it so you didn't want to loose that either, so you repaired the wire. Later, I worked on Cadillacs, got the opportunity to go to SET class, Special Electronics Training. We were shown on a periodic chart that the more electrons an element had the better the conductor it was and the less electrons it had the better insulator it was. Lead was closer to and insulator than a conductor according to the periodic chart. We were told that the lowest ohm connection that we could make was with butt connectors. A lot of the computer controls and sensors worked on 5 volt reference and soldered connections could cause enough resistance in the circuit to cause skewed reading and even set codes. We were also told that in a high vibration environment, soldering was still the only way to restore original strength to wiring. I now work on fire trucks for the county and we use the 3M connectors with the heat shrinkable insulation on them that weep a little sealer when they are properly shrunk. Easy, fast, weather proof, and we love to use them to replace troublesome weather pac connectors because you loose a minimal amount of wire when you replace them, like when replacing a component which is the purpose of connector in the first place. The question is, how often do you need to replace a stater or an engine? The stater connector was probably used in the first place to speed production and not for us as owners or field technicians. Dan's warning about heat shrink should also serve as a warning. It looks great but can do just what he says and allow a wire strand to poke through and short your stator. Also, the tape allows access later for testing. Myself, I'll be using the 3M blue connectors when the need arises.
I knew some one was going to notice...
