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Wow I Need Help With Soldering My Pushrods.

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Wow I Need Help With Soldering My Pushrods.

Old 09-14-2002, 02:54 PM
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Mr Hackney UK
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Default Wow I Need Help With Soldering My Pushrods.

WOW I NEED HELP WITH SOLDERING MY PUSHRODS
OK I BOUGHT A OLD P51 THAT HAS THE METAL PUSHROD BUT ONE OF THE THREAD COUPLERS CAME OF THE WIRE HOW DO I SOLDER
IT BACK ON AND WHAT SOLDER SHOULD I USE I DONT WANT THIS THING TO BRAKE AND I DONT WANT TO OPEN UP THE WING TO REPLACE THIS SYS.
Old 09-14-2002, 06:03 PM
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majortom-RCU
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Default Wow I Need Help With Soldering My Pushrods.

Standard Radio Shack electronics solder (Archer rosin core, not acid flux) will do just fine. If you don't have a soldering iron, I'd invest in a Weller pistol grip--they're very useful in modeling. If you already have an iron, and if it's rated 100 watts or better, you're in good shape. I would discard the current coupler and replace it with a fresh one. The most likely reason the old coupler came loose was the pushrod was not properly cleaned before soldering, or the joint was not heated enough, or both. Make sure you sand down both pushrod ends that are going into the coupler. Something like 150 grit should be good. Get down to bright shiny metal before you try to solder any kind of metal--steel, copper, brass or whatever. If you're starting off with a fresh iron, make sure the tip is clean--hit that with a few strokes of sandpaper as well, then tin the tip: let it get hot, then dab it with solder until you get a nice shiny bead of solder on it, then shake the bead off into a wastebasket. Have a damp sponge handy whenever you solder; use this to wipe the hot tip to spread the solder out in a thin coat on the tip of the iron. Wipe the tip again after every joint you solder, to get rid of accumulated flux and impurities that collect on the surface of the hot solder.

Now you've got a tinned tip, hot, wiped clean. Lay that onto the joined pieces, and feed in just a small dab of solder to help transfer heat from tip to joint. Give it a few seconds to heat the joint, then apply a bit of solder to the joint itself, not the tip. If the joint is hot enough, you should see the joint suck the solder right inside. If the solder balls up on the joint, it needs more heat. If you put too much solder on (it should flow onto the metal with very little visible thickness), then wipe the excess with the damp sponge. You want to see a bright, shiny surface on the solder, stuck tight onto the metal, like a coat of paint, not like a blob of putty.

Clean metal parts, clean tinned soldering iron tip, and sufficient heat in the parts to flow the solder are the secrets to a good joint. If it's not lying nice and flat, like a coat of paint, and shiny like brand new silver, give it some more heat, let the solder melt and flow, then let it cool for a couple seconds before wiping with the damp sponge.

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