Rear heated window!

Oh come on mate, soldering this back together is an easy job!!

Use your iron, just don't contact the glass for too long.

Make sure you are using solder with flux in. I'm sure your average 1mm thick electrical solder will be correct. Melt some up on the iron and if it fizzes and smokes rather than just quietly melting you know it's got flux in. You should also see a bit of a watery substance that separates from the metal.

Warm up the glass section until it starts to melt amd quickly daub on some solder. Tin up a piece of wore and solder that to the glass. Then fit a spade connector to it and connect it to your existing wire.

I soldered the wire direct on that Santana and it was amazingly easy and successful.

Go on, give it a go!

Mr Noisy said:

Oh come on mate, soldering this back together is an easy job!!

Use your iron, just don't contact the glass for too long.

Make sure you are using solder with flux in. I'm sure your average 1mm thick electrical solder will be correct. Melt some up on the iron and if it fizzes and smokes rather than just quietly melting you know it's got flux in. You should also see a bit of a watery substance that separates from the metal.

Warm up the glass section until it starts to melt amd quickly daub on some solder. Tin up a piece of wore and solder that to the glass. Then fit a spade connector to it and connect it to your existing wire.

I soldered the wire direct on that Santana and it was amazingly easy and successful.

Go on, give it a go!

Click to expand...

OK, soldering stuff together, in concept, I guess is quite easy, but...

you say "don't contact the glass for too long". I assume you mean "don't hold the iron against the bit of metal that is in contact with the glass for too long", right?

Also, you say "warm up the glass section until it starts to melt and quickly daub on some solder". Surely the bit of metal on the glass won't melt... it's the solder that is supposed to melt, no?

Finally, you say "Tin up a piece of wore and solder that to the glass.". I've absolutely no idea what that means at all! what is "tinning up" and what is "wore"?

I know these are stupid questions, but i've not done any soldering since I left school whatsoever, so I really am clueless!

op2:

Right, back to basics!

Sorry for the typo, I meant 'wire'. To 'tin up' is to coat with solder, so, to make a joint better, you first melt solder onto everything you want to solder together, in this case the end of your 'wire' and your tab on the glass.

When soldering the glass you don't want to overheat it, it might damage the glass, so try to be quick. You must get a good joint though. Car glass is resilient so you will be ok if careful.

All the element on the glass is metallic and will take to solder very well. Your baseplate on the glass will be soldered on already, so you will be able to warm it up and as soon as it starts to melt you can add more solder to it, so you've got a nice little blob of solder sat on the glass.

Then with your 'wire' stripped and tinned, you can heat the glass pas again til the solder melts, then swiftly rest the 'wire' into the solder blob. As soon as it looks like it all together smoothly, remove your iron and blow on it to cool it.

That's a job done!

It's a shame you're so far away!

The basic principal of all this chat is that you want to end up with a piece of 'wire' securely soldered to that metal plate.

It won't be that hard!

thanks for the advice! the connection seems to be made now, so we'll see how it holds!

Don't forget to dab some clear lacquer or something similar to protect the joint and the wire end from corrosion as the inside of the glass does get damp as we know.

Only after you know you joint is a good one, otherwise you will have to remove the stuff before you can solder the joint again.