Joel Definitely one of those things where practice makes perfect.

Thanks. Just hope someone can find some of it useful. Mike

MikesRadioRepair i have a 1991 camaro rs wiper motor pulse board for the windshield wipers that needs to be repaired. Its been discontinued for 6 years.Really cant find the same one anywhere. Can I please mail it to you so you can at least just take a look at it?? Before you say no. I really have no other options at this point.

I-I-I know. It helped m-m-me fix my 1981 Panasonic CT-1110A T-T-TV.

I would also interested in the type of desolder gun you are using.

In all the years I have been using SN62 composition silver solder I have never had a solder joint fail. It has the highest tensile strength of any solder, that's why I use it. My take on the matter is that if it's the strongest it would also be the least likely to break. The one thing you don't want to use ANY silver solder for is to solder gold plated parts. If you solder gold plated parts with silver composition solder it mixes with the gold and apparently will pop the gold plating off. That's the one thing I use normal tin/lead solder for or if required a lead free solder that has no silver.

MikesRadioRepair Thanks for the heads up on the gold platings. A lot of what I work on is the higher end test gear and does have gold plating and has for many years. I’m not sure where I was reading about the harder solders not being recommend I can see that depending on the type of joint stronger may not always be better as some flex may be expected and require. I’m going to have to look into this more, but I note your recommendation and experience using it. Thanks for the reply. It still amazes me that one reason that old solder joints are hard to melt is because copper is soluble in tin and over time raises the melting point. Your probably sick of tech, videos but drop in my channel and say hello sometime. I used your trick to clean the selector switch on the Kraco the other day and yes almost every joint I have looked at so far was suspect.Regards Chris

That's what I use to do and finally realized one day I was just looking over some parts of the board several times and missing others. This way I can systematically inspect the entire board and just put a little red dot on the tip of anything I find questionable. Once the whole thing is inspected I can do all my soldering at one time. Really speeds up the process and prevents missing bad joints. Mike

And it really makes good sense, especially if you get called away from the project, you'd have a better clue where you may have left off!

MikesRadioRepair great thanks for the reply! I'm the same way I decided to keep brushing with isopropyl and little by little dry the brush with paper towels so as to keep the board clean of the whiteness.

ah thats the other guys sloppy work? seems like the joints are touching each other in a lot of spots, how does it even work?

Almost all of my desoldering equipment is made by Pace.

MikesRadioRepair costly aren't they?!

I mix my own. I buy pure refined rosin cakes from Germany and disolve it in 99.9% isopropyl alcohol, about 1 1/2 tins to a bottle. They come in 20 gram tins. If you watch my soldering equipment video I show a tin of it. Its called Kolophonium and made by a company named Donau Elektronik GMBH.

Thank You.

That's a RA (highly activated) flux. Best advice is never use RA flux to solder electronics. If you do you have to remove all flux residue. It is highly corrosive and will destroy anything made of copper in no time. You should be using a mildly activated no clean flux.