Well, the snowpocalypse took down my 160M G5RV. It's about 9 years old, and has been spliced several times. Today it broke in two places (one side retarded the descent of a tree on my car...enough so that it landed on the car, but no damage).

So, my plan is to run new wire for the antenna, and reuse the center support and ladder line. It's currently running 18ga copperweld. I'm thinking 14ga copperweld, but am open to other ideas. Wireman also has some 14ga stranded, in addition to 12ga copperweld. 12ga is probably a bit overkill, but I do run a legal limit setup. The wire saved my car; part of me says something that can take a little abuse might not be a bad idea. I'm not against stranded either, but have heard that there's no real benefit to solid vs stranded.

Hmm, I've had some problems with copper weld, it's hard to work with and if it kinks you just about have to put a lineman's splice in it. It you want it to protect the car again you may not have any choice. Seriously, if you pick copper weld again be sure to get the higher quality wire with thicker copper. I have a problem here running a 140 ft dipole on 160M. With the proper length of feed line (18 ga, stranded copper weld ladder line.) the tuner will load it, but because the feed point impedance is low, lots of losses occur in the feed line. For those unknown and possibly low impedance points, I'd use the heaver ga. feed line.
73,
Rob