So I decided to add rear marker lights to one of my HO Walthers Superliner coaches. I built the markers with red LEDs, resistors and a TCS function only decoder. I tested and programmed the decoder using alligator clips on a piece of track hooked up to my DCC system. Everything good from there. The problem is trying to solder the pickup wires to the car's lighting strips. The solder will not stick even with flux.
Any suggestions? I even track HO track joiners and they are too small to fit on the car's electrical pickups.
Will
Can You use a pin-vise and drill a hole into the car's lighting strips the size of the wire and then solder with Silver bearing solder or paste solder, which will heat before 60-40 does?
Works for Me!
I use this brand exclusively:
http://www.solder-it.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=162
Walmart usually carry's it and others.
Take Care!
Frank
Wholeman,
While Frank's suggestion of drilling a small hole in the lighting strips may well work, I think the real problem is that the lighting strips are not getting hot enough. I soldered wires to the light strips of thriteen cars for interior lighting and the solder adhered to the strips. Try fluxing the strip, placing your iron on the strip for a couple of seconds, then toudhing the joint with solder. You should get a nice shiny blob firmly adhered to the strip. once that is done take a tinned and fluxed wire, hold it against the blob and touch it with the iron. The blob should quickly melt engulfing the wire.
Good luck!
Depending on the metal they use, it may be hard to solder to, in which case drilling a hole and screwing in a small brass screw might help. If it is a realtively easily soldered metal, the key is having a very clean and shiny tip on the iron AND a hot enough one. It's kind of like soldering track. If the tip is clean and hot, the area you are trying to solder heats up fast enough before the heat migrates into that whole length of rail and starts melting plastic ties. A dirty or insufficient power iron, you will hold the thing on there until the plastic softens and it still won;t melt solder.
Also, flux or not, make sure the metal is clean - take a scratch brush or a small file to the area you want to solder to make sure the area is clean free from any coatings and then apply flux and solder.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Also remember that soldering a joint takes less heat, than unsoldering a joint....no matter what kind of solder You use......
Take care!
If you are talking about the interior lighting strips, slightly open up a track joiner, solder a wire to one end and slip the other end over the lighting strip.
I appreciate all of the responses. I ended up soldering the decoder leads to the power leads on the light strip. Everything worked just fine. I don't know why I didn think of it before. It's funny that the simplest things can be staring at you in the face.