Originally Posted by Stubby3492

Personally, I will never solder a wire on my bike again, or anything else that vibrates.

A couple years ago, I had apes on my bike and I soldered the extension wires.
I did a very neat job, carefully sodered the wires together, then slipped a heatshrink over the solder joint, and when I had them all done, I put a larger heatshrink tube over all the wires to make it a waterproof harness.

It was fine for a couple years, until I was on a solo road trip, and my bike quit in the desert in Nevada. there was no power to the run switch, and I was stranded. I pulled the tank off and all the wiring looked fine, but checking it with a test light, I could tell there was a break in the gray wire. I slit open the large heatshrink tubing, and exposed the individual solder joints that also had heatshrink tubing.
Everything looked okay, so I slit open the heatshrink on the gray wire and the wire was broken right beside the solder joint. I slit open all the rest of them and found that most of them were almost broken off, some were only holding by a couple of strands.
The solder joints were fine, but the heat from soldering makes the wire right beside the solder joint brittle and with vibration it will eventually break off.

I temporarily fixed them with some red crimp connectors from Wally World, but when I got home, the first thing I did was redo the extension wires using crimp connectors. I used the red ones with the heat heatshrink already on them with the glue on the inside that melts to the wires for extra strain relief and water proofing..

Then I heatshrunk the bundle of wires together again like a harness. This is a permanent fix.

Do yourself a favor, and don't solder wires on a motorcycle or any thing that vibrates.

As far as I know, they don't solder wires cars, aircraft or marine applications.


-

Originally Posted by murph

I'm leaning towards the 40 watt station. Looks like that will do the trick.