Rebuilding the FI relay board. Options

[Air_Cooled_Nut]

My soldering skills leave something to be desired and the space in which to perform the soldering is rather tight but I was able to do it...I think...at least it looked okay and felt solid. Here's a picture of before my soldering and after it was all coated:
(IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/uploads/post-2-1063733351.jpg)

Mine showed only a couple cracks in the tar bottom and I'm sure I could've easily patched them but I wanted to see if recoating was easy. It is, just messy and I recommend wearing nitrile or latex gloves. The LET shrinks considerably. One container will be more than enough for two coats and left overs for later wiring projects. The 3M undercoating sprayed on easily and did not shrink. Several coats of that would probably be fine. I hesitated using RTV because I thought I read somewhere that it may be slightly acidic on some metals and I didn't want to risk having my copper strips and soldered joints disappearing on me one day while driving.

If anyone else has done this differently I would like to hear about it, be is successful or not. Mine was successful (short term at least (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ) as the car started right up and ran after installation. Will it last for the years to come? We'll certainly find out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/beerchug.gif)

[Air_Cooled_Nut]

I have an old soldering pencil. Couldn't tell ya the wattage.

I put the point on the rivet but the copper and rivet just sucked the heat away and I couldn't get any solder to flow. Here's what I ended up doing...
- Put solder tip on rivet center.
- Form a puddle of solder on the rivet. Thanks to surface tension you can get a decent sized bead on it.
- Keep the solder tip in the solder bead so it will get nice and toasty.
- Stroke the solder bead away from the center of the rivet and to the edge of it where it meets the copper ribbon.
- Keep the solder tip in solder bead, again heating it, then remove the solder tip.
- The solder will flow into/around the rivet and on the copper ribbon.

The reason I used the center of the rivet is because there isn't much room for the soldering tip. On spaces where there is room you can puddle the solder on the edge of the rivet. Again, my solder joints didn't look pretty but this method seemed to hold. If there's an expert on this subject, please, speak up!!! I would hope there is a better/easier way.

If you keep typing "solder", after a while it really looks like a funny word and you have to check the dictionary just to make sure you're spelling it right (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)