Step 3:  Attaching the Ground

Crank the soldering iron up a tad, around 35 – 40.

In this step we’re going to attach our spare piece of wire to the ground, and get a few heat shrinks in place.

Ground wire extended and heat shrink added.

Grab a 1/4″ heat shrink and cut its length in half.  Slip it over the 3 signal wires and the copper stub of grounding wire.  We’re going to try to cover the area where the grounding wire is coming from each of the 3 signal wires.  Put it into position making sure to keep the 1/2″ of ground exposed, and try to slip it over the existing casing as much as possible.  When in place, use a light to shrink the tube.  Expose all sides of the heat shrink to flame and don’t hold the flame in any one spot.  This should do a pretty good job of covering the area where the ground meets the signal wire.

Now grab the spare wire.  In the last step we stripped 1/2″ of casing off one side and 1/4″ off the other.  Right now we’re working with the 1/2″ end.  We need to twist this around the 1/2″ of exposed ground.  With the wires well connected, it’s time for our one solder joint.  With the two wires soldered, we’re going to grab another heat shrink, this time a 1/8″ tube.  Slip this over the spare wire and make sure it covers the area where the 2 wires are soldered.  It needs to be completely covered, because this part will be exposed.

Both heat shrinks added, exposed wire is covered.

If any wire down in this area is still exposed, slip another 1/4″ piece over all 4 wires.  Trim it to where it just does fit over any exposed wires at the junction of all 4 wires; we don’t want any excess tubing because this will begin to shorten the distance between wires and it may not fit on the console.

Finally, we need to add the pin connectors.

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