Soldering why won't it stick

[WH23G3G]

Ok I figured out why my middle brake light was going out when the brake pedal was pressed and why my reverse lights don't light up. The ground ring in the tail light sockets has broken off inside the socket. Now I've got each socket apart, cleaned it in evapo rust over night to get the corrosion off and tried to resolder the broken ring back onto it's wire. That was going to be hard in itself because it broken at the wire not just a broken wire. However, I absolutely cannot get the solder to stick whatsoever to this wire or the broken ground ring part. It just flow away when the solder melts like it's repelled. I'm using rosin core wire. I've got the fine and the thick rosin core wire. My friend told me I need some flux paste to help it stick. Doesn't do anything at all. I've been at it for 3 hours trying to get this one tab back. I've had it lightly soldered but needed to reinforce it some more and when I went to add more solder it just comes apart. Am I doing something wrong? I tried cleaning any remaining corrsion off with a dremel wire wheel attachment still no results. And I know I won't be able to find these ground connectors anywhere now. What else could I try?

[A383Wing]

yup...the wire is dirty and needs to be cleaned with the flux paste....

[WH23G3G]

I put it on the wire and the broken tab and it did absolutely nothing. I don't think that I will be able to fix this. I was going to strip some wire back and wrap the exposed wire around the broken ground ring and then try and solder that. But when I went to strip the insulation apart all the wire strands disengrated. I'm going to have to make a new harness extension to fix it. If it works the way I'm hoping I'll be able to post what I did to see if it's going to work. There's not much to photograph now because I haven't accomplished anything.

[Dino]

A few things:  the tip of the soldering iron needs to be clean and shiny, if it's not you're not going to be succesful.  Do not try to sand it, buy a new tip if this one is damaged.  The iron also needs to be pretty strong if you're trying to solder something like a lamp housing. I like 45 watts if there's no electronics to burn but others work as well. Don't use a 15 watt though, that may not cut it.  You need to tin the tip and clean it with a damp sponge or rag.  You do this every time you use it.  The substrate, in this case the ground ring, also needs to be clean and free of contaminants so use some acetone or alcohol to clean it.  Heat the substrate and touch it with the solder.  It should flow onto the substrate and become 'tinned'.  Do the same with the new wire. Once both are tinned you heat them up at the same time and add some solder.  The solder will now flow onto the ring and into the wire making them one.  There's some good youtube vids that show this so I suggest taking the time to look up a few.   

[68 RT]

A few things:  the tip of the soldering iron needs to be clean and shiny, if it's not you're not going to be succesful.  Do not try to sand it, buy a new tip if this one is damaged.  The iron also needs to be pretty strong if you're trying to solder something like a lamp housing. I like 45 watts if there's no electronics to burn but others work as well. Don't use a 15 watt though, that may not cut it.  You need to tin the tip and clean it with a damp sponge or rag.  You do this every time you use it.  The substrate, in this case the ground ring, also needs to be clean and free of contaminants so use some acetone or alcohol to clean it.  Heat the substrate and touch it with the solder.  It should flow onto the substrate and become 'tinned'.  Do the same with the new wire. Once both are tinned you heat them up at the same time and add some solder.  The solder will now flow onto the ring and into the wire making them one.  There's some good youtube vids that show this so I suggest taking the time to look up a few.   

Right on! Nice write up.

[twodko]

Jeez Dino!

You forgot to tell him about the dilithium wrap heat sink.

[Dino]

Jeez Dino!

You forgot to tell him about the dilithium wrap heat sink.

Well he didn't indicate he was trying to build a warp drive engine! 

WH did you make any progress?

[WH23G3G]

Yeah I gave up trying to get the solder to work. No matter how well I cleaned all the connections it just wouldn't stick to this original wiring. So I decided to try something else that should work. The tail light sockets for this 73 are an absolute horrible design I guess. They obviously were never meant to be taken out of the plastic tail light housings. All my ground tabs but one inside the sockets were broken on the passenger side tail light. So I couldn't get any of them to resolder. So I gave up on that. What I did was do away with those ground tabs except the one that was still good, amazingly I could get the solder to stick to it to reinforce it to the original wire. I decided to splice on new 18 gauge wire to the exsisting ground wire for each socket and use a bent ring terminal placed inside the sockets. It worked but still the same center bulb goes out when you step on the brake light with the headlights on. If you don't have the headlights on the brake lights work fine. I still can't figure that out. All lights and turn signals work correctly when the headlight switch is on only the brake lights don't work right.

[Dino]

That may very well be a bad ground on one of the sockets.  To test this you can wrap a bare wire around each socket, just tape it down for now, and run the wires to a single ground.  See if that works.  If not then at least you know the problem lies elsewhere.

[fy469rtse]

Dino,
where were you when i was having trouble with my flux capacitor and food processor on my delorian ?,
I was going to suggest simply heating with the iron before you try to solder.

[Dino]

The question is not where I was, but when I was.   

[Pete in NH]

To the OP, this sounds like a case where some pictures of what you were working on might have really helped others to understand what you were working with in terms of how clean the sockets were and what you were trying to do.

[tan top]

To the OP, this sounds like a case where some pictures of what you were working on might have really helped others to understand what you were working with in terms of how clean the sockets were and what you were trying to do.

yep