Today I continued with the connection of the #10 wires to the back of the Amp gauge.
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This photo is for educational purposes. I've already finished soldering the ring terminals to the wires but let me take this opportunity to do some teaching.
To begin with only part of soldering is the heat from the soldering iron. What causes the solder to flow into the wire is the heat from the melted solder, not so much how hot you've got the wires from the iron.. And let me say this now, if you've never cleaned your soldering iron, that's why you have problems soldering. You may be a good solderer but for some reason you just can't seem to get the job done. It's not so much you, it's how clean your iron is.
Always have a small sponge there while soldering, every time. A two inch or so square sponge is fine. Wet the sponge, mine is usually hard and dried up, enough until is limp and wet. Then squeeze the water out of it. That is wet enough. When you see some black stuff on the tip, take the sponge and as if pinching the tip, encircle the tip and quickly wipe the whole tip off. You don't want to cool the tip down from holding the wet sponge on the tip to long. It should be shiny, it's clean when there is no black stuff on it.
If you've got a bunch of black crap on the iron it may take a file to get it off. Periodically I redo the tip on my iron by filing it back down to the copper. Once you do that, re-tin the tip by allowing the tip to heat up until the solder
flows onto the tip, not balls up in places. When that happens it means the tip is not hot enough yet, or the tip wasn't clean when you tinned it, you are using the wrong kind of solder. For electrical soldering use
rosin core solder
. You may have to let several minutes pass until after a few tries, the solder
flows onto the tip. Once it's coated evenly it's "tinned".
Now you are ready to solder. Remember, it's the heat from the solder that makes the bond of the wires, not so much the heat from the tip. After all, how can the point of the tip heat a whole terminal? If you left the iron on the wire long enough for that to happen you probably start melting the insulation on the wire. You don't want to get it that hot. Let the solder do the work, not a whole lot of excess heat from the iron.
Once you place the tip onto the wire for a few seconds test flow some solder onto the tip, if the tip is hot enough for the solder to
flow, feed, push the solder into the wire being soldered. Continue pushing the solder into the wire, ring connector, splice, or whatever it is you're soldering, until you see it's full of solder. This may only take a few seconds to maybe a minute or so.
Like with these big ring terminals I had to do. I wanted to make sure the wire inside them was filling up with solder and in the process attach the wire to the inside of the ring terminal to. I could see the solder wick up through the split in the ring terminal.
Once the joint is full stop but don't move the joint. If you are soldering a wire on a flat surface, like I had to do on the gauge bulb sockets, or a thin piece of sheet metal you want to attach a ground wire to, or something like that. First you need to clean the area to be tinned. In the case of the sockets I scraped a small area with the edge of a pocket knife, then "tinned" that area, then soldered the wire to it. Once the soldering is done and you've removed the iron and solder, don't move the wire, or parts that were soldered, watch the soldered joint until you see it suddenly change color or texture. It's like it's freezing suddenly. At this point it's solidified and you can move the joint.
You could do all the soldering at one time, for instance like on the bulb socket, but it's better to do it in steps in case there is a problem with the tinning of the flat surface. There could be a problem where you didn't clean the surface well enough for the tinning to take place. If you were trying to solder the wire onto a surface that wasn't properly cleaned you could get contaminents into the wire at the same time you discover the flat surface had a problem.
Always make sure all parts of whatever it is you are soldering are clean either by chemical means, or mechanical means like filing or sanding the parts.
That should do it for soldering.
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Of course I didn't forget to slip the insulating covers on FIRST! It would have been me to forget this step, but I remembered this time.
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I used the part on the crimpers that says, "insulator only" and crimped the insulator onto the wire. You can see the solder on the wire right at the end of the terminals, and some has flowed out onto the ring. That's what a good flow looks like onto a ring. Don't let it build up to much though, the nut won't be all the way down on the ring making a bad connection. I almost got to much on the black wire. But it looks worse than it really is. There is more than enough ring for the nut to sit flat on it all around.
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And attached the terminals onto the proper posts, Alt. wire, red onto the "A" post, and battery wire, black onto the "B" post. I made sure the ring terminal was sandwiched between two star washers like the instructions say. I hope these are on the right posts but the instructions say just switch them if the gauge is indicating backwards, or showing "charging" when it should be showing "discharging" when I turn the lights on after everything is hooked up. The instructions say the first step is to test the hook up, DO NOT START THE TRUCK!
Hook the battery cable back on the battery and just turn the key to "ON", then pull the headlight switch out to see if the meter is going in the right direction. If it's all good, then I can start the truck. That will be exciting!
