Learned how to solder today, was quite the effort. My job today was to clean up the shoddy wiring job on the ditch lights that came with my 98. They were some blade style disconnect wire connectors that I assume came with the budget kit when one of the previous owners installed them and they were held together with some electrical tape. When I first got the truck I noticed one of them wasn't firing up and after fiddling with the wire found that it just was intermittently shorting and vowed to eventually clean up the job with solder and heat shrink.
First I bought a bunch of stuff between HF and Microcenter based off a youtube video, solder, flux, solder gun, heat shrink pack, wire strippers dielectric grease and a helping hand. Had to wait in a long line at Microcenter with the black Friday sale. First order of business was to solder on some extension wires since the person who did this job previously left basically no slack and it was going to be a nightmare trying to deal with that under the hood while learning to solder. To do this I took the lights off and worked on a makeshift table (yes I know I was technically soldering a flammable costco tote which is not advisable). Had a bear of a time trying to get the solder to flow into the joint based off the instructions I was finding (later found out exactly why, I'll get to that). Anyways 15 minutes into frustration the cheap solder gun that I got goes pop sends out sparks and trips the breaker in my garage. Go back up to Microcenter, decide I'm going to try an iron instead of a gun (ended up being the same price but much better quality) and wait in another 20 minute line to handle the exchange. Cashier put "Literally exploded" in the notes for the exchange which I had a good laugh at.
Get home and get set back up, this time with a beer to help with patience. First solder joint looked pretty bad but it was good and solid, totally forgot to put the dielectric grease on it but it was a negative connection so I decided to say screw it, heat gun I already had does a pretty good job of sealing anyway. Second connection looked quite a bit better. Heat shrink everything for the first light. Second light goes even better, connections are nice and solid and pretty.
Get everything situated to solder up under the hood. First light goes great, second light I mess up one of the connections and pull it a bit with a lot of solder already on it causing a joint too big for my heat shrink to fit over. Cut it out and restrip it and get a nice clean connection and get it all heatshrinked. Moment of truth comes to fire the lights back up and they work HUZZAH!
Took most of the afternoon/evening to do this job but I got it done and man does it look clean. Was the perfect job to learn soldering on. The one thing I learned while doing this that none of the youtube videos covered was how to get the solder flowing well. Most of the stuff I looked up said to put the soldering tip under the wire and your solder on top and the solder will eventually start flowing. That was total bullcrap, at least with the 14 gauge wires I was working with. Turns out heat conducts better through solder itself rather than just a bunch of independent strands of wire with barely any physical touching to conduct heat (yay thermodynamics). Once I figured out to hit the tip directly on the solder to get it started and move progressively away while still connected to the molten solder already on the wire it started going rather quick. Also learned the hard way on the soldering gun before it blew up to TIN YOUR TIP right off the bat with a new tip. Makes things so much more painless if get your tip started right.
Now I feel much more confident about tackling other wiring jobs on my truck in the future (I want to get some ditch lights that come on when I reverse but only when I have a switch flipped, want to do a backup camera, want to permanently mount my viair in the rear quarterpanel with a pressure selenoid, etc).
