soldering vs butt crimpin'

so when i first took apart my bike i had no idea what i was doing and cut all the hand control electronics. for absolutely no reason, wasn't my brightest moment.

I'm trying to solder the wires back together, this is my first time so its pretty frustrating. I'm terrible at it, below is a pic of my fine work, this is after 2 hours of practice.

can i just use butt connectors? what are the main pros and cons of crimping vs soldering? (other then the bulkiness of the harness where all the connectors are, cut it to close to the hand controls to stagger them)

 

DOn't get discouraged, you'll do better next time! This was a practice, right? I'm not a lot better than you, but I keep trying.

For better results, use flox (welding paste) on wires to be welded.

Welding is a lot safer compared to crimping on a long term, chances that a welded connection comes loose from vibrations are pretty close to zero.

NExt ime, have some heat shrink tubes slid on one side of the connection before you weld, weld wires, make sure the weld is strong, then slide the tube over the connection and apply some heat and watch the tube shrinks...funny

It will protect the weld against moisture a lot better than electric tape.

 

i haven't connected the other side to the remaining harness so ill still be able to slip on some shrink.

are those solders good enough to hold and conduct electricity?

 

The top one doesn't look too good, just looks like a clump of solder on top of the wires. Not enough heat on that one, definitely a cold solder joint.

Are you twisting the wires together? How much power does your soldering iron put out?

The proper way to solder (as I've learned it) is to heat the wire to a point where the solder flows. If your soldering iron is low power, it might not get hot enough or it might take a long time.

Also, apply the solder to the wire, not the soldering iron tip. If it doesn't flow, then the wire isn't hot enough and it'll form a cold joint.

Finally, soldering is very different from welding quebecois59. And poorly soldered connections do come apart from vibration, and if you put too much solder they can actually break. Solder is a great conductor, but is weak mechanically, hence the need for shrink wrap. Crimping, especially open barrel crimps, can also supply mechanical strength to the joint.

As for butt splices, closed barrel crimps are not as good as open barrel or F-Type crimps. I would trust open barrel splices, but I can't find any and they do require a special tool (same one you'll need to re-pin stock connectors).

 

I've been twisting them together pretty good and i have a 40watt weller.

 

SOrry, in French we have the same word for welding and soldering (souder) my mistake! I should have written "solder" everytime I wrote "weld".

 

if you rig up something like this
helper
life will be good.
stagger splices is good, little bit of grease on joint, shrink tube, your good.
get a big piece of shrink tube to go over the whole thing. black tape sucks

 

40W is a little light for the job.

I can see you held it on there long enough to heat the insulation and scorch it, but didn't get hot enough to flow the solder. The wires are conducting the heat away faster than you can put it on.

100W minimum for that job. The idea is to get the joint hot enough to flow the solder, and quickly so you don't melt everything.

 

Carl and ManBot are right. "Soldering 101" teaches us to heat the part, not the solder; and the joint has to be hot enough to "flow" the solder into it.

Truth be told, in this case a 15W ~20W iron would do the job (sorry Carl, but this is what I do for a living) if used properly. I can easily lap-splice two 12ga. stranded wires with my 15W iron without even melting the insulation. (And without getting any solder on the tip of the iron.)

For simply joining two wires, you shouldn't need to use additional flux; use a resin-core solder NOT an acid-core solder and you should be able to get a nice tight "overlap" joint. Insulate with heat-shrink not tape, as Polock suggested.

A GOOD solder joint is better than a crimped splice, to answer your initial question.

 

I tried a 40 w and a 25 w again and both melted the insulation and never took the solder. I used the wide tip they came with.

I may have to use the crimps for now to get the bike on the road and go back after some practice later this summer!

YouTube vid fitz!

 

maybe he's using that lead free solder................that sucks

 

I'm using lead free, silver bearing Rosen core

 

find a radio shack, if you still can, and get some 60/40 rosin core solder and a extra can of flux if they have it. you won't believe the difference

 

You guys need a show on velocity, you got 15k worth of viewers on xj4ever alone

 

Yep. Lead free is for plumbing.

 

Crimp on some connectors, in case you want to rip it apart again.