The case for CCA (over OFC)

[DIY Audio Guy]

For me it boils down to one thing. Most consumers (not just car audio, everything) are not well informed. They pay for something, and don't know what they are getting. Sometimes they overpay for an inferior product. That is the niche that CCA wire targets.


i made a video trolling Wall-Mart power wire here:https://youtu.be/l1so4k-Q9qI

[Grinder]

What if you were to coat the exposed bit of cca wire with dielectric grease?

To the extent that the wire is clean/uncontaminated and unoxidized, a liberal coating of dielectric grease should help prevent oxidation.

During 18 years of off-grid living, I've seen lots of corroded copper cable, battery (lead-acid) interconnects and terminals - those of friends and neighbors, that is... I thoroughly cleaned all my battery cable ends and interconnects with a baking soda solution and re-coated with them Vaseline on a yearly basis. Not CCA, mind you, but the principle is exactly the same.

However, copper and aluminum, as "dissimilar metals," are potentially subject to galvanic corrosion, particularly in certain applications, climates and/or automotive environments:

There is only a “potential damage” due to galvanic corrosion of copper clad aluminum if the wires are exposed to any electrolyte (battery acid, salt water, humid sea coast, etc). The potential for corrosion is not due to the current carried by the wires, but due to the dissimilar metals. The corrosion will occur at any defect in the copper plating where aluminum is exposed. The corrosion potential in this case is extremely high due to the very large cathode area of copper and the small anode area of exposed aluminum.
The damage will be localized to the exposed area, so may not be a problem functionally for some time. But the white aluminum corrosion product may be quite unaesthetic.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Wh...ium_conductors

[NoDestiny]

Thanks for all the discussion on this topic. Love learning!

When I chose for my car (2000 Honda Insight), I wanted to go with the lightest weight solution possible. After all, 1.0L of 3-bangin fury REALLY hates added weight. I know the difference isn't much, but I'm also an ultra-light weight backpacker, so it's in my nature to overthink weight savings. Plus the car is made of aluminum anyways, might as well stick with the theme.

[JayinMI]

I have had to remove blackened corroded sections of CCA wire on customer-owned amp installs, multiple times on the same install in less than a year.
I've had significant voltage loss on CCA wire (like 5V-ish) as well. So, unless you live in an extremely dry climate, and want to go through a lot of hoops
(essentially putting a band aid on the problem) just buy OFC wire. It's not that much more.

I bought 25ft of CCA wire for my own car a few years ago, but after seeing so many problems, I left it in a box and bought OFC wire before I did the install.

Jay

[Grinder]

I've not knowingly bought CCA wire (once ordered 12 ga speaker CCA by mistake), and can't imaging doing so in the future. No possible advantage seems worth the shortcomings.