Rebuilding the FI relay board. Options

[Air_Cooled_Nut]

My soldering skills leave something to be desired and the space in which to perform the soldering is rather tight but I was able to do it...I think...at least it looked okay and felt solid. Here's a picture of before my soldering and after it was all coated:
(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads/post-2-1063733351.jpg)

Mine showed only a couple cracks in the tar bottom and I'm sure I could've easily patched them but I wanted to see if recoating was easy. It is, just messy and I recommend wearing nitrile or latex gloves. The LET shrinks considerably. One container will be more than enough for two coats and left overs for later wiring projects. The 3M undercoating sprayed on easily and did not shrink. Several coats of that would probably be fine. I hesitated using RTV because I thought I read somewhere that it may be slightly acidic on some metals and I didn't want to risk having my copper strips and soldered joints disappearing on me one day while driving.

If anyone else has done this differently I would like to hear about it, be is successful or not. Mine was successful (short term at least (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ) as the car started right up and ran after installation. Will it last for the years to come? We'll certainly find out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[mightyohm]

A higher wattage iron with a decent tip helps a lot.

I used a high power Weller 60W soldering iron. A gun might work too but don't get too carried away. The fat tip might not let you get to all the rivets.

But first to really make good connections you want to use a wire wheel or grinder (don't get carried away) on all the rivets where they contact the copper traces. This exposes nice shiny copper which will solder a lot better than the dull oxidized stuff. Adding some extra rosin flux helps too (don't use acid flux or acid flux solder). Get the trace and the rivet nice and hot and apply solder right at and next to the tip. Ideally it will flow outward and coat the joint, but sometimes it takes some scraping with the soldering iron and more solder. If you wait too long you'll start to melt the plastic but a little bit of melting is inevitable.