I recently put in a 3.5 mm jack in my car stereo that I might listen to my iPod without an FM transmitter (with which I’ve had no luck) or one of those cassette tapes (my tape deck does not work). In using my bulky soldering iron which I am certain came from the 50’s, I soldered two pins together, and I’m sure I came close to breaking something on several occasions. Frankly, I’m surprised the whole thing worked in the end.

I had seen the ColdHeat soldering iron on ThinkGeek (my nerd toys site of choice), but found out that RadioShack sells them, too. (And at RadioShack, it was even the same price!) Being one who hates to wait for / pay for shipping, and seeing as Kevin and I are going to do the same little experiment on his car stereo this weekend, I hopped on down to RadioShack to get it. I had some other things on my RS shopping list for other projects that this store didn’t have, but so be it.

I got it home, turned it on, and overly-trustingly touched the tip. Nothing. I touched the tip to the solder, and it melted and a blob fell to the counter. As soon as I could, I touch the tip again. Room temperature. It’s pretty neat. Check out some of the videos of it out and about on YouTube and Google Video.

For those interested, I got the car-stereo jack idea from Lifehacker, who apparently found it on Make.