I've long had the CB mic cord tied up to the CB to keep it out of my way. Today as I went to put back the loop of velcro and re-rig things, I realized the wires inside were probably soldered and I could just chop the thing down about where I'd tied it.
Soldering is a super weak area in my repertoire of modifications, and while I've had the Cold Heat Solder tool for years now I've never been able to make it work (which is better result than I've ever had from a traditional soldering iron or gun...
).
I took the end apart and found the wires laid against the tabs, wrote the slot positions down and chopped the wire off about 4" from the end. At this point I was still intending to do some rats nest of wire and pray I could avoid soldering.
Oh no, what have I done? Too late now.
I tested the CH tool on one of the tabs and with a bit of experimenting got a wire to melt off. I resolved to be able to do this. Removed the sheathing and pulled each wire with my leatherman as a dead-weight/3rd hand while heating the solder. The goal was to leave as much solder on the tab as possible.
I cleaned up the remaining wires and after stripping and twisting added a new bit of solder to each end, using an old ashtray to work in. I put two sizes of heat shrink tube on and tied everything to a stick to keep the wire from curling up and got ready to solder things back.
At this point I almost forgot to add the metal collar, which like the heat shrink needs to be in place before attaching the end. D'oh!
Tore everything down, including one of the heat shrink, and did it all again. With everything in place I soldered the wires back to the tabs, starting with the center. I had about a 70% success rate, but nothing is touching so cross your fingers that it will work.
The smaller heat shrink was installed as close to the front as possible, the second up to just under the clamp. Both together provide a bit of stiffness to keep the cord straight and it turned out to be a good size to get everything nice and tight.
Unfortunately not many people use a CB these days, so random testing didn't produce anything, however the CB did not blow up or show abnormal function, so I'm hoping everything went according to plan.
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