A little preheat of a body really helps, even just hitting it with a hair dryer on full for 20-30 seconds before applying flux and Solder with help it flow. I've worked assembling PCB for the last 5 years and preheating a large copper area before trying to add of remove a component is essential. I could see the cool temp of the that Ford connect was sucking the heat right out of the Solder.
Try heating the metal instead of the solder. When the metal gets hot enough to melt solder, apply it to the joint allowing capillary action and adhesion to fill the joint. Keep heat on the joint if needed. Repetition will help show what works best for you. I enjoy your restorations, good stuff. Thanks for posting.
As an electronics guy, some times you can preheat the entire piece to around 100-150°C with hot air and then apply the solder with soldering iron at around 280-360°C, keeping the temperature controlled is for tiny pieces with fragile materials (like ceramic or FR4 circuit boards), but as everything the magic is in the timing. Flux paste is also encouraged, watch out for more aggressive (acid) stuff intended for copper piping, it may be good for your purposes. With practice I have soldered galvanized steel, copper and brass reliably.
The secret to a good solder joint in these rolling heat sinks is an 80W soldering iron. With a 20W iron I can't reliably solder anything without burning it.
You could literally see the tin solder solidify in contact with the body. Thats why coppersmith soddering irons are 100W+ range. You can further extend the soddering "window" by zinc plating, since it will act as an additional barrier on the zamak (zink-aluminium-magnesium-copper) alloy copper presence. But a high capacity iron is a must first
Potentially preheating as far as it'll go will help. That's how we deal with heatsinky items in electronics. We also have high-power soldering guns with a bent piece of copper wire as a tip through which low-voltage high current passes directly, which heat up very quickly and are for this reason convenient, usually 150W or stronger, but they're really unwieldy and can be dangerous for electronics, but for something like this, seems quite adequate, and they can be pretty cheap. "60W" generic 936/937 soldering stations from China routinely fail to deliver a whole lot of power for some bizarre reason. Chinese T12 does a lot better, even old ZhongDi (yes also Chinese) 50W units can work much better than the new "60W" ones, it might just be the gaps and fitment of parts. I hear some people pour some graphite or copper anti-seize into the tip to improve performance of the 936 but this seems a bit messy.
It's a fascinating process, but when you put the plating solution into that Corningware dish, all I could think of was my mother's horrified reaction. "What are you doing?! Those are my _good dishes!_ " :)
Oh my gosh, im so glad youre doing this! I was literally just looking into this a few days ago and this is a MAJOR help to me! Thanks so much for sharing this!
It's a good trick to use sandpaper over the area you want to solder first, something like 180 to 220 (also it can help to cut a grill pattern with a razor). And the tempt of the car should be high already to help the adhesion, so it's better to first warm it up, then apply the flux, and then go with the solder and tin (here you can clearly see how since you applied the cold paper tissue, the tin immediately got hard and you needed more heat to work it out).
That is bloody awesome, I I have not seen anyone solder anything on a diecast car yet, you are the first. I thought everyone watch your videos for info, I have always considered you one of the best.
I truly enjoy your channel. I'm trying to incorporate soldering into my customs and I just saw how you did the solder. Brilliant. Thank you for the details of your build-outs.
I've learned that tip size is very important when soldering smaller and bigger parts. I was soldering thin wires for my 3D-printer and the small tip worked fine but then I had to solder on some thick gauge high-amp wire onto an aluminium plate that had some copper-clad terminals (the heatbed). This didn't work. No matter how long I would hold the soldering iron onto it. Now I borrowed a soldering iron from a friend that had a tip that was about 8mm wide and the terminals were soldered in 5 seconds. Also, the type of solder really makes an enormous difference in attachtment. I always hated my solder, and then I switched over to a different type with a different core and it always worked. My solder even worked better than the factory-used solders because when I would go over soldering joints from household appliances, by solder would always stick better. So I would end up desoldering the solder and applying my own whereever I had to fix something. You can also use this bigger soldering iron together with a so called solder wick (made of copper strands loosely loomed together) to remove solder where needed.
So glad to see someone posting interesting videos like this. The only thing I would suggest would be to heat your substrate more. Only when the two contact points reach the solder melt point will it create a reasonable filet. (a solder filet is a solid joint that forms a convex or concave joint between contacts.) If one contact point reaches temp but the other does not, the result is what is called a “cold” solder joint which is the joint side that scrapes off of the substrate. Wiring the substrate to a heater block will do the trick. The higher you can get the bulk of the substrate to temp, the less heat is required on your tip. A third hand at the point of no return in applying the flux just prior to soldering will also yield a cleaner joint. Thanks for taking the time to post this.
I think you need iron with more thermal mass. Whole body of a car is heatsink and it shows with cold joints. Or try to preheat car on electric stove/plate and then try to solder. Clickspring has some great videos on soldering bigger metal parts. Don't really know how zamac will react to such treatment but it may be worth a try. And you really should just wet the iron tip, solder on the tip is just for thermal transfer, add more to the joint directly when it's heated, it is hard to do with only two hands and fiddly parts but when I grasped that it made a world of difference. Anyhow, great video, waiting for more. Cheers!
Great video and a lil helpful hint you might use when adding stuff to the car/trucks is to use a double alligator clip mounted base which will give you that extra hand we always need. When I work on smaller electronic components it comes in handy
I’ve been doing for several years now, you’re doing good don’t get me wrong. All I’d like to say is experiment with using less solder, if done correctly it will still be sturdy but give a cleaner look
I'm using this exact same method to solder wires on circuits. Use the solder flux to also clean your soldering iron and make it last longer and work better
I’m taking this up as a hobby. Been watching vids and yours are the most informative. That said, I’ve already written off soldering to start. Majority will be for show and I guess glue will work..for now. Also didn’t know people pronounced the L in solder 🤷♂️
That last bit of soldering gave me an idea that might be fun. You could make car crash dioramas. Build a tiny guide rail, have it jam into the grille and stick out the rear... Or really impale a car with anything your heart desires.
Informative video. The only thing I have to add is to make sure to have a fume extractor when soldering. Even a simple fan sucking in and blowing away the fumes, preferably outside, is better than nothing.
Just a few quick general soldering tips. Solid metal objects are a tremendous heatsink that steal heat away from the soldering iron and away from the intended spot. To prevent this it is helpful to preheat the object (standard toaster oven is just fine). Nothing too crazy, just roughly to the point where you can still hold it with bare hands. Having a more powerful iron (60+ W) might also help. Also, it always pays divident to pretin wires or other parts you want to attach, rather than chancing it and accidentally oxidizing metal and then having to clean it before you can try again.
Copper plating the whole car seems overkill and rather time-consuming (of course, as the whole hobby is) but you want to rough up the surface pretty good so the solder can stick to it easier and quicker (it doesn't stick to mirror-finish surfaces). Also you can use rosin-core solder to eliminate the need for separate liquid/paste rosin thus freeing up one hand in the process. :) But here's the big trick to soldering anything, whatever you're soldering needs to get hot enough to melt the solder. Meaning you need to melt the solder with the car, not with the iron. Doing it this way makes the metal you're applying solder to much more apt to accept it. And if you scuffed the surface well and have your rosin solder it will etch on much quicker & stronger as well. Initial tinning for everything but the iron is done the same way, using the metal to melt the solder can make some your soldering jobs go twice as fast! And lastly, you won't have any issues with your solder remelting when it's over 1/4" away on any surface/metal composition unless your solder has too low of a melting point (or your iron is set too high). Knowing your solder's melting point and your iron's temp can really help you pull off some clever repairs when you have the right combo.
@@steveread864 clearly you havent seen mine XD I'm curious though, did you watch far enough into the video to realise most of the 'soldering' was just to make a point? Many people nowadays seem to merely get triggered, pause, leave a snoody comment and close the video. I originally also thought "wtf is this guy doing", but there's a point to it. The first few at least. I'm sure the actual ones can be improved.
One component you may want to consider is to get a temperature controlled soldering station. You can get an acceptable one from Amazon for less than $100.00. As someone below mentioned knowing the melting point of the solder you are using and then dialing it in on the station makes for a much more robust and; in the case of a restoration, a more eye pleasing joint. You are headed in the right direction with the copper plating. Get a good station and practice on a junker and I think you'll end up with something very satisfying. Good luck!
Yup. Marty uses a product called "Muggy Weld" -- their website describes it as "Super Alloy 1 is a low-temperature multi-metal and pot metal solder that bonds all white metals and can also join white metals to practically any other metal-even ferrous to non-ferrous metals, like steel to aluminum."
I have a feeling the solder isn't sticking most of the time because you're not getting the base metal hot enough quickly enough. It going to take a good quality iron with a high thermal mass to get the base metal hot enough to wet before all the flux is gone. Even moderate irons like the hakko 888 probably won't be powerful enough. Likely that wire stuck because of how long the iron was on it and how much flux core solder was dumped into it. The copper wets easier so less heat is needed.
I recently started work on a restoration of a more modern hot wheels, which is my first restoration. It took forever as I had to use nail polish remover with acetone as paint thinner
Great presentation! Well done. Absolutely a must to apply flux to the materials that are to be joined. The copper playing idea is great. The plating (as well as your process of cleaning) are great additions to moving the craft of the hobby forward. Again great job!
Try different soldering tips. I prefer the chisel tip. The round tips lose heat to fast if you notice. That’s why you get it to stick once you added enough solder to cause a bigger heat transfer. That die cast will suck the heat just like soldering guitar pots and petals. Enjoy your videos hope this helps :)
Great video. Appreciate in particular: (1) always supplying name and links of major items/supplies you use [very helpful!], (2) really editing your work - I'm sure there were a lot of stops and starts but your finished videos are wonderful. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
BM , I have a tip for you I do stained glass and if your looking for pre tinned wire it comes in 18ga. And 20ga. If your going to solder on your cars it's great to use just a lil flux and your good to go also you can try blue glass flux it's a water based flux wont leave a residue on your cars
You may need a larger tip. I have found that when soldering on PCBs that have large ground planes, a larger tip with more heat works wonders. The added amount of copper on the board sucks the heat away from the solder joint as is the case of the car body acting like a heat sink.
alumaweld may work better than solder but maybe not. I expect it would be worth trying out, seems to me it would be easier than soldering. I also think brazing would be easier than soldering. im not sure of the melting point of zamac though, the torch might melt the car too easily. just my two cents. y'all have a badass day 🤘🏻
A very useful video. Thank you. What's interesting is the pronunciation of the word 'Solder'. The British, Australians, New Zealanders say it as 'SOLE-DER', whilst Americans say 'SODDER'. It's rather odd, and I've never worked out why it should be. 'Sod' in English is an old swear word, short for 'Sodomite', it also means 'Wet Turf'. 'Sodder' does sound rude. 😆😆😆
the British pronunciation is based on the old french word soulder, the American pronunciation is based on the middle english word soudur. the british pronunciation was most likely influenced by their proximity to france, while we in america kept the older pronunciation but adopted the newer spelling.
Bu tree that’s interesting and sounds feasible, I’ve often wondered how Americans came up with that way of saying sole-der. I have another issue with the word “ mirror “ us bits have that as two syllables but across the sea it has just one. Thank you for your post
@@llamamanism most americans pronounce mirror with two syllables, it's just non-rotic dialects, which are actually more common in britain than the united states, that make it one syllable.
Great videos! Very professional. I enjoy watching them and learn a lot from them. A few questions: You use a battery charger to electropolish your diecast cars. Which amperage do you use, 6 amp or 2 amp? I see that you use a vibratory tumbler to polish your cars. What media do you use? You've been able to polish the windows back to their original sheen. What polish do you use? You mentioned links to products that you use in the videos. Where are these links and where do you post answers to the questions that we viewers ask? In another vein, you had mentioned that you asked viewers to inform you about products that might be available to solder pot metal cars. Both Muggy weld and Caswell make products that will solder pot metal directly without copper plating first.
Just a heads up. If you are using a Redlineshop replacement hood you can not use solder. The heat from the soldering iron will destroy the hood. Great video.
My friend you need to invest in a hot air soldering station. This makes it SO much easier to solder diecast. I do it all the time on my mixed media train models.
A good tool I've found for small precise work (I use it on my knives when I make giards or do engraving) a strong 202 micromotor from treeline tools. I also invested in 1/16" dental burs. I use it very very often and it is very precise especially when compared to a dremel
Some of the trouble you are having as some others have said is you need a hotter iron. You can be quicker and get better results for some things because you aren't soaking everything with too much heat. I have that issue when trying to solder larger audio audio connectors with 14 gauge wire with a 40 watt iron. All I do is melt the cable insulation trying to get the solder to flow with the flux the cable just draws the heat away giving the same types of joints where you can pick the solder away. Try a soldering gun that gives out so much more heat. You'll find the tack soldering will be fast and the solder will flow nice and neat like a real weld. I have a lot of soldering experience on woodwind instruments repairing them. Not having enough heat makes it so you can't keep heap localized.
I'm not sure if I'm stating the obvious. Tin alloys readily with copper, which is why tin - lead solder is used in electrical connections. Thanks for the tip on copper plating the base metal.
I've Ben watching your channel for some time now & have seen your experience & skills grow exponentially many times I've wondered if somethings possible and how to do it and you come up with a video you talked about making bent Axel's can't wait to see that video
Hmm. Here's a few tips for soldering, from someone who's done a fair bit of it. You should be able to do it without plating, the trick is to preheat the item you want to solder on. The reason you're not getting a good joint, is either because of impurities in the metal, which with diecast is a good possibility, but more likely, because of insufficcient heat. Copper plating is not a bad idea though, it's certainly a better material to work with than just pure diecast, but it does seem to be a rather lengthy process, compared to preheating the metal in say, an oven. More than likely your soldering iron, which looks to be a fairly cheap one, does not have enough power to pump sufficient heat into the metal. The metal acts like a giant heatsink, just sucking away the heat from the iron, before a good joint can be formed. You can try to compensate for this by using a larger chisel tip on your iron, but preheating the diecast will help a lot. Another way to go about it, is to use something like a torch to solder, rather than a soldering iron. Both a larger tip, and a torch would probably make it harder to do precision work, so once again, preheating the metal is probably the way. Of course, diecast usually has a low melting temperature, so how much you can heat it, probably warrants some experimentation. You will want to get it as close to the melting point of the solder as possible though, so that the diecast doesn't just suck away the heat. I'd recommend using low temp leaded solder as well, but seems you're already doing that.
lead soldering can be difficult if you are soldering small parts. I recommend to you to use all the heat you need when soldering big joints, but for small parts i recommend 25 watt or 30 watt, in fact those are the best soldering irons for electronics
I said about this on the last vid but for a different method - a narrow application heat gun gives you more control than an iron. It works for electronics repair!
Yeah I suggested one of those little butane soldering irons with the hot air blower would work well for this. Large metal surfaces will pull away heat from the soldering iron tip pretty fast.
Some thoughts about your soldering. You could try a hot air soldering ironyou definitely need to clean the tip it should always be silver never that black tarnished look.. great video man keep up the great work
As an optician I sometimes have to fix optical frames, for which we use silver solder and a very hot flame. Don't know how this will perform on diecast, for it might melt the whole thing. ;) For metal frames it's a good way to fix things though.
I've been looking at something that Marty (Marty's Matchbox Makeover) used, Muggy weld. It was a good episode worth checking out. Cost may be a factor for some, but it may be an option for really difficult repairs. Just a thought. Great video, keep it up.
Try using a small butane torch to solder with. You need a lot of heat, quickly. If you plan to do this regularly and have a healthy hobby budget, get a resistance soldering unit, which is better than the torch, as it can pin point the near instant heat you need for properly soldering on your cars.
The main issues with welding die-cast is the low melting temperature of the material and the thin material walls. In a nutshell, you need a verry short amount of exposure time to a controled temperature before the material starts meltung. Givven the thin walls aspect and the melted material viscosity, the weld puddle tends to clog instead of run, making things quite complicated. Try heating the material just a bit with a propane torch before trying the weld on the base material. In theory, just a slight increase in temperature on the already raised temperature, for a verry short amount of time should liquify the material just enough for the material to be welded. Please note that this technique can be applied to the un-plated material, and also some deformation might appear. Inner matterial tensions should not be an issue unless you preheat before attempting any bending.
Like with that rack, have you tried using one of those mini butane torches to heat the area then wet in the solder sort of like how you solder copper piping for water lines. You might also be able to use one of those butane powered soldering iron with a hot air attachment to heat the area. Generally with a large surface like that car body it will wick away heat from the area being soldered with a normal electric soldering iron.
Man, I used to solder shit back in middle school (7-8th grade). We just made some wind ornaments or something using copper wire, copper strips, some colored glass things and heaps of lead to liquify the shapes.
This is awesome! I had reservations about just gluing in the hoods, but this is so much better. I have only one question, What if the hood has lost its little pin? Would you just built it up and then file to size? Or would you solder on a little pin like you glued one in a previous video? I think that your restorations are great! I played with some of these cars back in the '60's, most belonged to other kids as my cars were Tootsie toys. I remember my first Matchbox, a station wagon with a dog looking out the back. Thank you for what you are doing by sharing your passion.
Would it be helpful to also rough up the Zamac surface a bit before plating? And also rub the plates surface down with some steel wool or something so the solder has more tooth to stick to?
I think it's great you keep experimenting with the process and providing the results. Would be better using MuggyWeld? Marty's Matchbox Makeovers has shown it in use a couple of times with great success.
Brilliant. As usual you've taken this hobby to a whole new level. Well done.
A little preheat of a body really helps, even just hitting it with a hair dryer on full for 20-30 seconds before applying flux and Solder with help it flow.
I've worked assembling PCB for the last 5 years and preheating a large copper area before trying to add of remove a component is essential.
I could see the cool temp of the that Ford connect was sucking the heat right out of the Solder.
The greatest solder advice I've heard is "heat the work, not the solder".
With you hair dryer theory ..do you have to keep heating the body everytime you start to solder?
@@ernzcustomz Yes if needed
Try heating the metal instead of the solder. When the metal gets hot enough to melt solder, apply it to the joint allowing capillary action and adhesion to fill the joint. Keep heat on the joint if needed. Repetition will help show what works best for you. I enjoy your restorations, good stuff. Thanks for posting.
I was thinking the same thing. All of my soldering experience is to MilSpec standards. I should look more into this myself.
Be sure not to use a torch. Try it with an electric hot plate and find the correct temperature.
As an electronics guy, some times you can preheat the entire piece to around 100-150°C with hot air and then apply the solder with soldering iron at around 280-360°C, keeping the temperature controlled is for tiny pieces with fragile materials (like ceramic or FR4 circuit boards), but as everything the magic is in the timing.
Flux paste is also encouraged, watch out for more aggressive (acid) stuff intended for copper piping, it may be good for your purposes.
With practice I have soldered galvanized steel, copper and brass reliably.
We've come along way, remember when it seemed impossible.
Soldering toy cars?
The secret to a good solder joint in these rolling heat sinks is an 80W soldering iron. With a 20W iron I can't reliably solder anything without burning it.
You could literally see the tin solder solidify in contact with the body. Thats why coppersmith soddering irons are 100W+ range. You can further extend the soddering "window" by zinc plating, since it will act as an additional barrier on the zamak (zink-aluminium-magnesium-copper) alloy copper presence. But a high capacity iron is a must first
Potentially preheating as far as it'll go will help. That's how we deal with heatsinky items in electronics. We also have high-power soldering guns with a bent piece of copper wire as a tip through which low-voltage high current passes directly, which heat up very quickly and are for this reason convenient, usually 150W or stronger, but they're really unwieldy and can be dangerous for electronics, but for something like this, seems quite adequate, and they can be pretty cheap.
"60W" generic 936/937 soldering stations from China routinely fail to deliver a whole lot of power for some bizarre reason. Chinese T12 does a lot better, even old ZhongDi (yes also Chinese) 50W units can work much better than the new "60W" ones, it might just be the gaps and fitment of parts. I hear some people pour some graphite or copper anti-seize into the tip to improve performance of the 936 but this seems a bit messy.
Very easy to follow and down to business way of talking, I'd listen to you forever.
Awesomeness.....imagine the extra detail that you could add to your mad max series....
It's a fascinating process, but when you put the plating solution into that Corningware dish, all I could think of was my mother's horrified reaction. "What are you doing?! Those are my _good dishes!_ " :)
Funny that's what my wife said when she saw this video....lol
So cool you got the process flushed out, the potential is endless. I can't wait to see what you have in store. Hope you're feeling better 👍
Oh my gosh, im so glad youre doing this! I was literally just looking into this a few days ago and this is a MAJOR help to me! Thanks so much for sharing this!
It's a good trick to use sandpaper over the area you want to solder first, something like 180 to 220 (also it can help to cut a grill pattern with a razor). And the tempt of the car should be high already to help the adhesion, so it's better to first warm it up, then apply the flux, and then go with the solder and tin (here you can clearly see how since you applied the cold paper tissue, the tin immediately got hard and you needed more heat to work it out).
That is bloody awesome, I I have not seen anyone solder anything on a diecast car yet, you are the first. I thought everyone watch your videos for info, I have always considered you one of the best.
I truly enjoy your channel. I'm trying to incorporate soldering into my customs and I just saw how you did the solder. Brilliant. Thank you for the details of your build-outs.
You should get a wider tip. The extra thermal mass and heat transfer due to surface area will help
I've learned that tip size is very important when soldering smaller and bigger parts. I was soldering thin wires for my 3D-printer and the small tip worked fine but then I had to solder on some thick gauge high-amp wire onto an aluminium plate that had some copper-clad terminals (the heatbed). This didn't work. No matter how long I would hold the soldering iron onto it. Now I borrowed a soldering iron from a friend that had a tip that was about 8mm wide and the terminals were soldered in 5 seconds. Also, the type of solder really makes an enormous difference in attachtment. I always hated my solder, and then I switched over to a different type with a different core and it always worked. My solder even worked better than the factory-used solders because when I would go over soldering joints from household appliances, by solder would always stick better. So I would end up desoldering the solder and applying my own whereever I had to fix something. You can also use this bigger soldering iron together with a so called solder wick (made of copper strands loosely loomed together) to remove solder where needed.
So glad to see someone posting interesting videos like this. The only thing I would suggest would be to heat your substrate more. Only when the two contact points reach the solder melt point will it create a reasonable filet. (a solder filet is a solid joint that forms a convex or concave joint between contacts.) If one contact point reaches temp but the other does not, the result is what is called a “cold” solder joint which is the joint side that scrapes off of the substrate. Wiring the substrate to a heater block will do the trick. The higher you can get the bulk of the substrate to temp, the less heat is required on your tip. A third hand at the point of no return in applying the flux just prior to soldering will also yield a cleaner joint. Thanks for taking the time to post this.
Yesterday, restoration.
Today, soldering on copper plate.
Tomorrow, the world!
Bwah-ha-ha-ha!
Top video, Thank You!
I think you need iron with more thermal mass. Whole body of a car is heatsink and it shows with cold joints. Or try to preheat car on electric stove/plate and then try to solder. Clickspring has some great videos on soldering bigger metal parts. Don't really know how zamac will react to such treatment but it may be worth a try. And you really should just wet the iron tip, solder on the tip is just for thermal transfer, add more to the joint directly when it's heated, it is hard to do with only two hands and fiddly parts but when I grasped that it made a world of difference. Anyhow, great video, waiting for more. Cheers!
Very clever. I can't wait to see what you do with your new found technique.
Thank you for making and posting this. I'm not doing cars but 1950s / 60s era Varney brand cast metal model railroad locomotive shells.
Great video and a lil helpful hint you might use when adding stuff to the car/trucks is to use a double alligator clip mounted base which will give you that extra hand we always need. When I work on smaller electronic components it comes in handy
I’ve been doing for several years now, you’re doing good don’t get me wrong. All I’d like to say is experiment with using less solder, if done correctly it will still be sturdy but give a cleaner look
I'm using this exact same method to solder wires on circuits. Use the solder flux to also clean your soldering iron and make it last longer and work better
I’m taking this up as a hobby. Been watching vids and yours are the most informative. That said, I’ve already written off soldering to start. Majority will be for show and I guess glue will work..for now.
Also didn’t know people pronounced the L in solder 🤷♂️
That last bit of soldering gave me an idea that might be fun. You could make car crash dioramas. Build a tiny guide rail, have it jam into the grille and stick out the rear... Or really impale a car with anything your heart desires.
Informative video. The only thing I have to add is to make sure to have a fume extractor when soldering. Even a simple fan sucking in and blowing away the fumes, preferably outside, is better than nothing.
Just a few quick general soldering tips. Solid metal objects are a tremendous heatsink that steal heat away from the soldering iron and away from the intended spot. To prevent this it is helpful to preheat the object (standard toaster oven is just fine). Nothing too crazy, just roughly to the point where you can still hold it with bare hands. Having a more powerful iron (60+ W) might also help. Also, it always pays divident to pretin wires or other parts you want to attach, rather than chancing it and accidentally oxidizing metal and then having to clean it before you can try again.
Copper plating the whole car seems overkill and rather time-consuming (of course, as the whole hobby is) but you want to rough up the surface pretty good so the solder can stick to it easier and quicker (it doesn't stick to mirror-finish surfaces). Also you can use rosin-core solder to eliminate the need for separate liquid/paste rosin thus freeing up one hand in the process. :)
But here's the big trick to soldering anything, whatever you're soldering needs to get hot enough to melt the solder. Meaning you need to melt the solder with the car, not with the iron. Doing it this way makes the metal you're applying solder to much more apt to accept it. And if you scuffed the surface well and have your rosin solder it will etch on much quicker & stronger as well. Initial tinning for everything but the iron is done the same way, using the metal to melt the solder can make some your soldering jobs go twice as fast!
And lastly, you won't have any issues with your solder remelting when it's over 1/4" away on any surface/metal composition unless your solder has too low of a melting point (or your iron is set too high). Knowing your solder's melting point and your iron's temp can really help you pull off some clever repairs when you have the right combo.
Could you do a video showing how this would work on zamac hot wheel cars? I've looked at some of your vids, good stuff.
Well said. That was some of the worst soldering I have seen in 30+ years of working in electronics.
@@steveread864 clearly you havent seen mine XD
I'm curious though, did you watch far enough into the video to realise most of the 'soldering' was just to make a point?
Many people nowadays seem to merely get triggered, pause, leave a snoody comment and close the video.
I originally also thought "wtf is this guy doing", but there's a point to it. The first few at least. I'm sure the actual ones can be improved.
Awesome , but i also will have to stick with J B Weld. Great video as always . Mike Espo
One component you may want to consider is to get a temperature controlled soldering station. You can get an acceptable one from Amazon for less than $100.00. As someone below mentioned knowing the melting point of the solder you are using and then dialing it in on the station makes for a much more robust and; in the case of a restoration, a more eye pleasing joint. You are headed in the right direction with the copper plating. Get a good station and practice on a junker and I think you'll end up with something very satisfying. Good luck!
Thanks again for the tutorial and best wishes for the new year!
i love your videos i have used some of your techniques on restoring my uncles old car back to new.
Marty over at Marty's Matchbox Makeovers has soldered diecast bits together a few times now. Might be worth checking it out.
Yup. Marty uses a product called "Muggy Weld" -- their website describes it as "Super Alloy 1 is a low-temperature multi-metal and pot metal solder that bonds all white metals and can also join white metals to practically any other metal-even ferrous to non-ferrous metals, like steel to aluminum."
I have a feeling the solder isn't sticking most of the time because you're not getting the base metal hot enough quickly enough. It going to take a good quality iron with a high thermal mass to get the base metal hot enough to wet before all the flux is gone. Even moderate irons like the hakko 888 probably won't be powerful enough. Likely that wire stuck because of how long the iron was on it and how much flux core solder was dumped into it. The copper wets easier so less heat is needed.
I got a rotary tool for Christmas I can’t wait to use it I’d imagine it works like the tools I use at work
Thanks for your video demo. I want to learn the techique of copper plating and soldering to die-cast
I hope you know how important your vidios are to all of us!!!! HAPPY HOLLIDAY'S to you and yours bud!!!!!
I recently started work on a restoration of a more modern hot wheels, which is my first restoration. It took forever as I had to use nail polish remover with acetone as paint thinner
Another great video, I needed this also. Thanks for the information.
Awesome, many thanks and all the best for the new year.
Interesting video! Thank you for the info!
Great presentation! Well done. Absolutely a must to apply flux to the materials that are to be joined. The copper playing idea is great. The plating (as well as your process of cleaning) are great additions to moving the craft of the hobby forward. Again great job!
Useful dude very useful, this can help me one day if I wanna do restorations of classic Hot Wheels and Matchbox Cars.
Glad you're feeling better, happy new year!
That is cool. Thanks for showing this. I didn't think it was possible.
Try different soldering tips. I prefer the chisel tip. The round tips lose heat to fast if you notice. That’s why you get it to stick once you added enough solder to cause a bigger heat transfer. That die cast will suck the heat just like soldering guitar pots and petals. Enjoy your videos hope this helps :)
Great video. Appreciate in particular: (1) always supplying name and links of major items/supplies you use [very helpful!], (2) really editing your work - I'm sure there were a lot of stops and starts but your finished videos are wonderful. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
BM , I have a tip for you I do stained glass and if your looking for pre tinned wire it comes in 18ga. And 20ga. If your going to solder on your cars it's great to use just a lil flux and your good to go also you can try blue glass flux it's a water based flux wont leave a residue on your cars
You may need a larger tip. I have found that when soldering on PCBs that have large ground planes, a larger tip with more heat works wonders. The added amount of copper on the board sucks the heat away from the solder joint as is the case of the car body acting like a heat sink.
alumaweld may work better than solder but maybe not. I expect it would be worth trying out, seems to me it would be easier than soldering. I also think brazing would be easier than soldering. im not sure of the melting point of zamac though, the torch might melt the car too easily. just my two cents. y'all have a badass day 🤘🏻
Great explanatory video thank you for sharing.
With everything, practice makes it better. Can out good. Hood works. 👍
A very useful video. Thank you. What's interesting is the pronunciation of the word 'Solder'. The British, Australians, New Zealanders say it as 'SOLE-DER', whilst Americans say 'SODDER'. It's rather odd, and I've never worked out why it should be. 'Sod' in English is an old swear word, short for 'Sodomite', it also means 'Wet Turf'. 'Sodder' does sound rude. 😆😆😆
the British pronunciation is based on the old french word soulder, the American pronunciation is based on the middle english word soudur. the british pronunciation was most likely influenced by their proximity to france, while we in america kept the older pronunciation but adopted the newer spelling.
@@butre. You know how it is, kernals and colonels
Bu tree that’s interesting and sounds feasible, I’ve often wondered how Americans came up with that way of saying sole-der. I have another issue with the word “ mirror “ us bits have that as two syllables but across the sea it has just one. Thank you for your post
@@llamamanism most americans pronounce mirror with two syllables, it's just non-rotic dialects, which are actually more common in britain than the united states, that make it one syllable.
NERDS.. I say sawder
Was that maybe a.. Madmax build preview there in the end?
Could be......
I doubt it
Great videos! Very professional. I enjoy watching them and learn a lot from them. A few questions: You use a battery charger to electropolish your diecast cars. Which amperage do you use, 6 amp or 2 amp? I see that you use a vibratory tumbler to polish your cars. What media do you use? You've been able to polish the windows back to their original sheen. What polish do you use? You mentioned links to products that you use in the videos. Where are these links and where do you post answers to the questions that we viewers ask? In another vein, you had mentioned that you asked viewers to inform you about products that might be available to solder pot metal cars. Both Muggy weld and Caswell make products that will solder pot metal directly without copper plating first.
Try zinc plating. Works very well in pinball's light sockets.
That's a great tip bud!!!! Great advice!!!!
Thank you for the recomendation! Congratulations AND Happy new year! From México City Víctor Ramos
Just a heads up. If you are using a Redlineshop replacement hood you can not use solder. The heat from the soldering iron will destroy the hood. Great video.
My friend you need to invest in a hot air soldering station. This makes it SO much easier to solder diecast. I do it all the time on my mixed media train models.
I have one... I will give it a shot
A good tool I've found for small precise work (I use it on my knives when I make giards or do engraving) a strong 202 micromotor from treeline tools. I also invested in 1/16" dental burs. I use it very very often and it is very precise especially when compared to a dremel
Some of the trouble you are having as some others have said is you need a hotter iron. You can be quicker and get better results for some things because you aren't soaking everything with too much heat. I have that issue when trying to solder larger audio audio connectors with 14 gauge wire with a 40 watt iron. All I do is melt the cable insulation trying to get the solder to flow with the flux the cable just draws the heat away giving the same types of joints where you can pick the solder away. Try a soldering gun that gives out so much more heat. You'll find the tack soldering will be fast and the solder will flow nice and neat like a real weld. I have a lot of soldering experience on woodwind instruments repairing them. Not having enough heat makes it so you can't keep heap localized.
very interesting. Creative use of a disadvantage, turning it into an ADvantage. I approve :P
Hey just a suggestion. Since you're soldering on rods to that van. You shouls do a Dale's Dead bug van from King of the Hill👍👍
I'm not sure if I'm stating the obvious. Tin alloys readily with copper, which is why tin - lead solder is used in electrical connections. Thanks for the tip on copper plating the base metal.
It's time for a mad max build off!
I've Ben watching your channel for some time now & have seen your experience & skills grow exponentially many times I've wondered if somethings possible and how to do it and you come up with a video you talked about making bent Axel's can't wait to see that video
Hmm. Here's a few tips for soldering, from someone who's done a fair bit of it. You should be able to do it without plating, the trick is to preheat the item you want to solder on. The reason you're not getting a good joint, is either because of impurities in the metal, which with diecast is a good possibility, but more likely, because of insufficcient heat. Copper plating is not a bad idea though, it's certainly a better material to work with than just pure diecast, but it does seem to be a rather lengthy process, compared to preheating the metal in say, an oven. More than likely your soldering iron, which looks to be a fairly cheap one, does not have enough power to pump sufficient heat into the metal. The metal acts like a giant heatsink, just sucking away the heat from the iron, before a good joint can be formed. You can try to compensate for this by using a larger chisel tip on your iron, but preheating the diecast will help a lot. Another way to go about it, is to use something like a torch to solder, rather than a soldering iron. Both a larger tip, and a torch would probably make it harder to do precision work, so once again, preheating the metal is probably the way.
Of course, diecast usually has a low melting temperature, so how much you can heat it, probably warrants some experimentation. You will want to get it as close to the melting point of the solder as possible though, so that the diecast doesn't just suck away the heat. I'd recommend using low temp leaded solder as well, but seems you're already doing that.
🤔 I do like my JB Weld, I’ve been tempted to try this too.👍🏼👍🏼
Elegant solution.
Nice tutorial, well done!
Great technique! Thanks bmHW.👍🏼🤘🏼😎
A suggestion: take a look at the guys who do vintage PC restorations. A lot of them are soldering champs!
lead soldering can be difficult if you are soldering small parts.
I recommend to you to use all the heat you need when soldering big joints, but for small parts i recommend 25 watt or 30 watt, in fact those are the best soldering irons for electronics
Some small advice, get a better flux. We exclusively use Amtech at work. Google NC-559-V2-TF Tacky Flux
I said about this on the last vid but for a different method - a narrow application heat gun gives you more control than an iron. It works for electronics repair!
Yeah I suggested one of those little butane soldering irons with the hot air blower would work well for this. Large metal surfaces will pull away heat from the soldering iron tip pretty fast.
Would like to see more custom builds
Nice work as usual, very helpful 👍
Some thoughts about your soldering. You could try a hot air soldering ironyou definitely need to clean the tip it should always be silver never that black tarnished look.. great video man keep up the great work
Very interesting as I'm half way through a ZAMAC Tournament
Have you tried a micro torch? It really helps the solder flow into the nooks and crannies.
Thanks 4 the tutorial
As an optician I sometimes have to fix optical frames, for which we use silver solder and a very hot flame. Don't know how this will perform on diecast, for it might melt the whole thing. ;) For metal frames it's a good way to fix things though.
btw, I really enjoy the videos you share with us
I've been looking at something that Marty (Marty's Matchbox Makeover) used, Muggy weld. It was a good episode worth checking out. Cost may be a factor for some, but it may be an option for really difficult repairs. Just a thought. Great video, keep it up.
Try using a small butane torch to solder with. You need a lot of heat, quickly. If you plan to do this regularly and have a healthy hobby budget, get a resistance soldering unit, which is better than the torch, as it can pin point the near instant heat you need for properly soldering on your cars.
The main issues with welding die-cast is the low melting temperature of the material and the thin material walls. In a nutshell, you need a verry short amount of exposure time to a controled temperature before the material starts meltung. Givven the thin walls aspect and the melted material viscosity, the weld puddle tends to clog instead of run, making things quite complicated. Try heating the material just a bit with a propane torch before trying the weld on the base material. In theory, just a slight increase in temperature on the already raised temperature, for a verry short amount of time should liquify the material just enough for the material to be welded. Please note that this technique can be applied to the un-plated material, and also some deformation might appear. Inner matterial tensions should not be an issue unless you preheat before attempting any bending.
If you get the chance you might try a resistance soldering unit. Great video.
Great tutorial brother
Like with that rack, have you tried using one of those mini butane torches to heat the area then wet in the solder sort of like how you solder copper piping for water lines. You might also be able to use one of those butane powered soldering iron with a hot air attachment to heat the area. Generally with a large surface like that car body it will wick away heat from the area being soldered with a normal electric soldering iron.
Very usefull tip! Thank you!
Man, I used to solder shit back in middle school (7-8th grade). We just made some wind ornaments or something using copper wire, copper strips, some colored glass things and heaps of lead to liquify the shapes.
kool have a good new year ... †
This is awesome!
I had reservations about just gluing in the hoods, but this is so much better.
I have only one question,
What if the hood has lost its little pin?
Would you just built it up and then file to size?
Or would you solder on a little pin like you glued one in a previous video?
I think that your restorations are great!
I played with some of these cars back in the '60's, most belonged to other kids as my cars were Tootsie toys.
I remember my first Matchbox, a station wagon with a dog looking out the back.
Thank you for what you are doing by sharing your passion.
Very interesting an thanks for the knowledge !!!!!!!!!!!!
Would it be helpful to also rough up the Zamac surface a bit before plating? And also rub the plates surface down with some steel wool or something so the solder has more tooth to stick to?
I would preheat the entire car. Get it nice and warm so the heat doesn't move away from the joint, then give it the solder treatment.
It looks interesting. Thanks for sharing this.
What about missing window posts? How to replace them
I think it's great you keep experimenting with the process and providing the results. Would be better using MuggyWeld? Marty's Matchbox Makeovers has shown it in use a couple of times with great success.