- Hey, Donnie Smith here and in this video
I'm gonna show you how to solder a couple of wires together.
(electricity buzzing)
Yeah, so my son just got a 2004 Sierra pickup,
GMC Sierra pickup and he took the stereo out
and wants to put an aftermarket stereo in
and to do that, you need to buy the harness.
You've got the plug that goes into the aftermarket radio
and then you've got the stock OEM plug in,
well you need a plug in that goes from...
Your new aftermarket radio, that goes into the OEM plug
so this adapter will come with the OEM plug
and some wires that you'll have to splice together
that goes to the plug into the radio.
So anyway, to find this, you just
go to look for your make and model
and it should give you the right plug for that
but in this video I'm just going to show you how to solder
a wire, I'm not gonna go through the whole harness,
I just might mention be sure that you keep the right colors,
I mean, they're color coded, you know,
white with white, black with black,
if it's blue, make sure if it's blue with a black stripe
that it goes with the one with the black stripe,
just match all the wires up and you'll be fine.
But let's get started with the soldering.
Now, I'm not gonna claim that I'm someone that solders
everyday like some people do,
but I'm gonna show you how to solder a wire together
and I was doing this at home and didn't bring all my tools,
a wire stripper works a lot better than doing it this way
cos you don't want to cut any of the wire
so if you've got a wire stripper,
I really would recommend that
but you can do it with a razor knife, the way I'm doing it.
Just be careful not to cut any of the wires
whenever you're taking the insulation off, the plastic.
So I just kind of roll it around,
just to cut the plastic enough where I can slip that off
so once I get that, that's the plug
that goes to the OEM plug that's in the pickup.
Now this is the plug that goes to the new aftermarket stereo
and, just like I mentioned, I'm going with white with white
just matching up all the colors so that they're correct.
So I have stripped the wire off both of these,
or stripped the insulation off both of these wires
and next what I'm gonna do, is put some heat...
Heat shrink, went blank there for a minute,
heat shrink over this.
Now you want to do this before you solder together
or you won't be able to get it on there
so just slide it over the wire
and then you can kind of fluff up these wires a little bit
where they're kind of intertwined a little bit
to make a good connection.
So I'm going to kind of push these wires together
and now I'm just going to twist them together
and that makes a good connection,
I mean that will actually hold
with just that twisted together.
And what I'm doing now, is
I'm putting a little bit of flux on this wire.
Now you can do this without flux,
but this really helps the solder flow
into the connection there, into all the wires.
So I've got some electrical solder here,
it's a lead-free solder that I'm using
and I'm going to put the solder gun underneath the wire
and heat the wire up, pre-heat it
and when it's warm, I'm going to put the solder on the top.
That just kind of allows the solder to flow into the wires
and that way it makes a real good solder connection.
So I'm heating it up,
and when that flows in, it'll kind of flow around
that entire wire and that flux helps that happen,
helps it kind of flow into the wires a little bit better
so I'm doing that, heating it up,
and, like I said, someone that solders everyday,
does a lot of electrical work,
they can probably do a lot better job with this than me
but whenever I was doing it, I did get a lump on there
kind of like a little bit heavy on one end,
if you do that, and you'll see me do it here in a minute,
right there, kind of rub it in where it's not real lumpy
because remember, we've got this heat shrink
that we've got to pull over this connection
and if there's a huge lump of solder sticking there
it's not gonna slide over good.
Now you wanna allow that to cool
and then I'm just gonna slide this heat shrink on
and again, I'm a little bit unprepared, I will admit that
because this type of torch lighter does not work,
it's too hot but it's all I had,
but really just a regular cigarette lighter works the best
because it doesn't get quite as hot.
So I'm just having to give this
a little bit of heat at a time
and then that just shrinks up and makes a good tight fit.
A lot of people leave it like that,
but just for the insulation,
just to give it a little bit more insulation
in case some of that solder or something did poke through,
I like to go ahead and get some electrical tape
and just wrap it around there a little bit
and this is just to give it a little bit more insulation
between the other wires so if something ever poked through
they're not gonna hit.
So again, this probably isn't necessary,
just something that I like to do.
So I've got that on
and make sure it's good and tight and as you can see,
this makes a good tight fit, it's a strong wire
and now you're ready to go to the next one.
Well I hope you enjoyed this short video.
If you did, be sure and give me a thumbs up,
give me a like, share this with your friends,
and we'll talk to you in the next video.