The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay soldering gas gauge resistor wires?

the gas gauge in my '54 stopped working a few months back. I finally got around to looking for the problem. all signs pointed to bad gauge.

I pulled the gauge and found that one of the super thin wires on the gauge resistor had become unsoldered. this wire is not much thicker that a human hair. I also found two tabs on the back that look like they have solder on them but i'm not sure of their purpose.

so, I have two questions.

1. any trick to soldering that thin wire on without melting the wire itself. I have a 25 watt iron and I guess I could just touch the wire into a small blob of hot solder and not apply any heat directly to the wire.

2. what are the tabs on the top of the gauge for? I have included a link

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the tabs i'm not sure about are circled in yellow. the thin wire that has come unsoldered is circled in red.

thanks in advance for the help.

using a small pencil tip heat the tab until a piece of thin electronic solder melts, then put the wire into the solder and hold it until it cools. The wire won't melt

The big problem is cleaning the wire. Very difficult without breaking it off. Unless it is clean it won't tin and won't make a good solder joint.

Gently squeeze the end of the wire between a folded piece of 600 grit sand paper and gently pull the wire out. After a couple of times try to tin the wire.

I had to replace that thin copper wire, used a single strand of a braided copper wire, although it still was slightly thicker. I carefully melted the solder as Jim mentioned and it held together.

thanks. i'll give it a shot and see what happens.

do either of you know the purpose of the two tabs i circled in yellow?

i figured out that the tabs are where im suposed to solder the wires. my bad eyes and a temporary drop in iq points had me confused for a bit.

thanks again for the help.