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You know you're blind. I know you're blind. You know you're old, I know you're old.... Get some glasses already.Arrgghh! Dammit!
Today I decided to finalize the placement, attachment, and wiring of the under-the-car lighting. I spent 3 hours figuring out the best place to put the main junction box, so that it's antenna could get the signals from the remote, routing/securing the wiring, and attaching the LED strips. I get to the tightening the last wire tie on the last LED strip and I'm just minutes away from powering it up for a test, when I notice that the wiring coming out of that LED strip was cocked at an angle. Oh schitt, I hope that doesn't mean something bad. Powered it all up and 3 of the strips light up and that 4th one did not. Touch the wire at that strip and it completely came loose. I see little tiny sparks as the 4 microscopic wires start shorting out to each other. Oh schitt! I scurry out from under the car to disconnect the power. Upon examination, all 4 wires have broke off where they were soldered to the LED strip! Son of the beach! It's darn near impossible to re-solder hair-thin wires onto terminals that are 1/64" apart from each other. I don't have a precision soldering iron and it's been 10 years since I had the eyesight to do the job, but I'll take a crack at it. I'm not optimistic. If I can't do it I'll have to cut dozens of wire ties and throw the whole set away, then repeat the entire install process with my second LED kit. The whole kit is one piece, break any part of it and it's all junk.
I am so pissed off right now.
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You know you can afford it, I know you can afford it. Buy a decent soldering iron.
Hot glue is preferred for electrical stabilization. RTV is too flexible.That's often a problem with those LED strips. Probably a good idea to glop a bunch of RTV on that exposed wire bus before doing anything with them.