soldering onto the cigarette lighter wire

[numberplate]

I needed a power source for my new dashcam today so i thought i take it off the back of the cigarette lighter socket. firstly i was surprised at how thin the wires are nowadays. I stripped back the insulation in order to make a splice connection , and you wouldnt believe this , the solder would not stick to the conductors !! they looked a silver colour not the usual copper
has anybody struck this before or is there something i'm doing wrong ?

ive soldered plenty of connections in my time so its strange to have struck this now. I was going to try using some soldering fluid but ended up with a mechanical connector, which worked ok.

any ideas? I did notice that auto electricians seem to favour those blue scotchlock connectors for wire taps.

[hylux]

Yeah not good wire to solder. You can try scraping it with a razer blade first. Hot iron and gat the solder in before trying to join the other wire. Otherwise cut twist and crimp them all together.

[numberplate]

maybe there is some sort of coating on the strands ? i dont know . felt a bit gritty so there is something different about it. in the meantime I'll know to be more careful making joints.

I dont see how a scotchie would be all that effective long term , may lead to high resistance joints.

[TOYZX]

Its just tinned copper wire. Twist it up nice and tight, nice hot iron and good flux core solder. Never had a problem.

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[fracturedranga]

Clean the exposed wire with some contact cleaner and a clean rag also make sure your soldering iron tip is clean. As toyz said its just tinned copper. A good solder join comes down to prep. Get everything clean and itll be easy. Any burnt crap or insulation residue will cause you dramas

[martynvella]

Heat is the answer, if the wire behind your dash needs to be cleaned before it can be soldered then get rid of the car, it has been swimming.

If you ever need to solder wires that have gone black under vehicles and trailers and such you could use acid core solder as a last resort(scotch locks isn't even on the options list), but acid core will cause further corrosion and fail in a year or two unless cleaned with the product recommended after soldering.

Any auto electrician that uses scotch locks should have his trade cert cancelled. It obviously was a waste of time sending him/her to tafe.

[akroehn]

I soldered into that same wire, i was also surprised at how thin it was... but mine soldered no problem, just like any other wire...

[Richard]

With the new model and obviously thinner supply wires if you're going to mess with them make sure the original Toyota wire can in fact hold the power draw you need.

I had some work done recently and the Auto Electrician refused to use the original wires (fridge hardwired via the lighter outlet from the battery).

[Qwerty]

What's it for?

I'd suggest not using the terribly thin factory wiring for anything of load.

I've even noticed on my volt meters (which have nice proper thick wiring to both batteries) a 0.5v volt drop difference to the ciggy lighter plug (the ciggy lighter i have a usb charger plugged into, which happens to have a volt meter built into it ... so it shows a comparison to my proper volt meters).

You're better off running some nice thick proper wiring to the battery.

[berniecam]

Heat is the answer, if the wire behind your dash needs to be cleaned before it can be soldered then get rid of the car, it has been swimming.

If you ever need to solder wires that have gone black under vehicles and trailers and such you could use acid core solder as a last resort(scotch locks isn't even on the options list), but acid core will cause further corrosion and fail in a year or two unless cleaned with the product recommended after soldering.

Any auto electrician that uses scotch locks should have his trade cert cancelled. It obviously was a waste of time sending him/her to tafe.

X2. Could not agree more about auto electricians & scotch locks very well put I salute you, they only use them because they are fast cheap & nasty & they never learned to solder properly, & one of the major causes of a high resistance joints. If anyone doubts this get one use the right size wire & scotch lock use only on a scrap piece of wire crimp it down then open it back up again have a good look at it & you will see some of the copper strands are cut right through or at very least badly fatigued, & when you only a few strands to start with on small diameter wire you are gamer than Ned Kelly. Yep bloody Scotch locks Cheers.

[hylux]

Scotch locks and crimps are totally different. Used probably thousands of crimps over the years and are fine if you use a quality crimping tool.
Scotch locks type wouldn't ever use particularly in something like a car moving all the time