For the last year at least I’ve been driving at night and had my headlights go out, probably other lights as well, but you don’t know about those till someone honks at you. It set me on vicious cycle of bonnet plug cleaning, pin retentioning, dip switch and headlight switch cleaning, fuse replacing, fuse block replacing etc.
I finally took out the inner bonnet half of the bonnet plug and was shocked to find that the tiny screws that retain the wires in the pins and the pins in the sockets were all 1/4 turn loose. This is the replacement style plug not the original. I had installed it maybe 10 years back and fearing this exact thing I’d cranked them down as much as I could before something snapped off. And still they loosened up.
It’s an awful way to assemble a mission critical plug. So I unscrewed them one by one, pushed the pin out and cleaned it up. Then I filled the end up with solder. The wire end was tinned, and shoved through the socket. I heated the pin and shoved the wire in. The pins are relatively snug in the holes, but I added a few drops of super glue and pulled it back into place.
If you want piece of mind throw the screws in the trash and solder this assembly together! I believe the original one was done that way.
This is amazingly coincidental to what I am doing right now, that is, replacing the 8pin bonnet plug with one from the usuals and the same design as Erica describes. My concern at this point prior to installation into the bonnet, is how to lock the screws into place! I thought about solder but then thought what a nightmare it would be if I needed to, for some reason, remove and dismantle the thing.
The screws provide the locking into the connector of the pins. Without those in place the pin can be pulled back through the connector when uncoupling it from the main harness.
I was going to ask if anyone has considered using some kind of loktite on said screws?? Did you try that Erica?
Another thought is to put the bullets on the wire ends, insert into connector and solder that to the pin…would save a lot of solder. One might even sharpen the screw to a point and then insert it into said bullet connector, again, using some loktite.
Les, Your second idea sounds great if you have it on the bench and have bullets lying around. Mine is in the car and I just wanted it fixed in place without any more dismantling. The pins aren’t in any danger of pulling out. In fact they were starting to wobble a bit with just the screws holding them in.
Loctite would certainly be better than no loctite. Solder is the strongest and you won’t have to worry about any corrosion. I was really surprised how much they loosened up. drilling a hole in the bullet would be awesome if you can do it through the threaded hole without ruining the threads. The screw would need to be in place before you solder or it will fill up the threads.
Whenever possible, I fit a crimped wire end ferrule to any stranded wire which goes into a screw clamped connector/pin.
In Europe these are mandatory for use on stranded cable for AC use. (Because of the higher voltage you have much smaller conductors, so the grub screw has a much smaller area of conductors to clamp on - using a ferrule reduces the likelyhood of a hot joint.)
I have a set of fancy racheting crimpers, but you can get simple plier crimpers
I think you’re entirely correct. It’s odd to me that neither the plug nor the new pigtail came with parts to make this work better, or even instructions for that matter. The wires to the pigtail were bare stripped wire. I had tinned them for good measure but it wasn’t enough.
I think the solder joint will work just fine but this way would have been easier and cleaner.
So what’s thinking on…slide the plastic pin-holder of the connector over all the wires so the wires are protruding out the “down side” of said connector…solder bullets on wires…insert pin back into holder…carefully drill hole into bullet to accommodate pin locking screw…add loctite to screw, insert and tighten.
The aforementioned would allow dismantling of the connector if required but also provide grabbing and locking of the screw/pin ass’y.
The problem I mentioned earlier is that the solder will booger up the threads and you won’t be able to use the screw after that. You also can’t really solder it after the screw is in there because it will be inserted into the housing and it will melt. I think you have to pick one method or the other. Either should work and will be superior to what I had originally done which is clearly wrong.
As I mentioned I used gel super glue to hold the pins in. Between that and the tension from the harness the pins aren’t moving. They’d pretty much all have to move at the same time which isn’t going to happen. Even if they did, they can only pull out, and could easily be pushed back in. It’s not something to worry about IMO.
Update…I found the bullet idea wont work on the connector I got from SNG, the hole in the pins aren’t large enough. I went the way of soldering the wires in place, after all, that’s the way it was done in Coventry and it only lasted, oh, about 50 years after all. All but one of the screws came out after soldering the wires in place and they were inserted again using red loctite after the pin was set into the connector housing. I’ll try gluing the pin into place that has no screw to use.
For the wires on the car side of the connector I haven’t decided yet whether to solder or try using the screws with loctite…I’ll probably solder them but using the screws is a lot easier but if for some reason the wire comes loose and I’ve loctited the screws, I wont be able to remove the pins to solder them…sounds like I just talked myself into soldering the lot!
Were the bullets significantly larger than the pin hole? Wondering if other folks might want to try over drilling a bit. There is also the option of a smaller ferrule as Andrew suggested.
Good deal that the screws came out. I should have also suggested coating the threads with something to prevent solder from sticking. There is stuff specially for that called “anti flux” I believe. But other things would probably work, maybe just locktite.
I think you’re good to go. Use a zip tie to act as strain relief for the pigtail when you install. The one risk with solder is that the wire can no longer flex and long term vibration can cause it to fracture. So you you’ll want to firm up the pigtail into a bunch so that each wire is supported by the grouping.
