[Radioroslyn]

So I've been on the hunt for a large soldering gun and I found one, a Weller D-550. It's a earlier model the newer ones are 200/240w the older 240/325w. Had set my budget at $30. There are a bunch of them on ebay but most were $45+ shipping making the total abt $60.

Found a bit of a dirty one for $28 shipped and it had a new tip and spare (worth abt another $8). It came in the mail yesterday and I went to work on it. Looks to have been in the flood or two over the years so a good cleaning was in order.  The lights weren't working, one of the lamps was burned out and both socket were split (brass fatigue). A quick wrap of copper wire around the top of the socket and a little solder, good as new. The tip was loose so it wasn't working seller had said that it didn't get very hot. Tighten it up and a dip in some Nocorrode. Tinned up nicely.

Now for the acid test will it get hot enough to unsolder that braid? Is the tip long enough to get down to the connection w/o burning up the surrounding components?? Passed with flying colors and made this job easy on the parts chassis. Now I have to get a certain 41-608 out of my way and onward to the 116X. Would recommend the D-550 for any of these hard to reach/ need a lot of heat jobs. Was reading on some other sites that it's a handy gun for soldering large coax connector and even brass radiator repair. Below is a pic of a Weller Jr (100W) and the D-550.

I have some standard grommets that should work well in this application.