I was walking through Costco and found a big end display with a ton of these Coleman Cold Heat cordless soldering tools.   My first thought was "man, that would be great for the truck."  Then as I looked the package over I started to wonder, will it really work or will it just be a waste of my money?


(Click to enlarge)

So much to my wife's dismay, I added it to the cart.   After enduring her frown, I told her it was for my truck in case I had a wiring problem while out on the trail.   I really needed it!   Costco's price was only $24.99.

So here is the scenario.... you are out on a trail and you drive over some brush or maybe even a downed tree limb.   While doing so, some wire under you vehicle is torn loose.   It could be anything from a wire for a tail light , rock light, off-road light, or maybe something important such as a sensor wire.   Either way, you want to get it quickly fixed so you can continue with your trip.   This is where a tool like the Coleman Cold Heat comes in.   

With no outlet required and its compact size, you can slip it into the glove box until it is needed.  

The Cold Heat comes with a hard plastic carrying case, instructions, 4 small spools of solder, the Cold Heat tool and one soldering tip.

You can order additional tips for different projects.   It is powered by 4 AA battery's.
So I would have something to compare it with, I pulled out the old 100 watt soldering gun and soldered two small pieces of 18awg wire together.
This is that the 100 watt plug in iron's connection looked like.
The Cold Heat is quite simple to operate.   The on-off switch is on top (yellow arrow).   

Once on, a small light that is supposed to light up your work area comes on.   

This may give you some light if it was really dark, but as you will see in the next picture, it really does not light up your work.

To make it get hot, you need only to touch both sides of the split tip to your work.   When you do, you may see some small sparks and the red light will come on indicating that the tool is working.

This is the connection I made with the Cold Heat.... not too bad!!

The trick I found was that unlike the large plug in soldering iron, the Cold Heat needs a few seconds to heat the wires up before you add any solder.   I would say it took between 5-10 seconds, and then I added solder.

While normally you would expect the soldering iron to heat up faster, for a compact battery operated unit I felt that it worked very well.  It was more than enough to make a permanent repair with this size or smaller wire.

Once you are all done, it fits nicely back into the hard case for storage.

It's an item that you may not need often on the trail, but if you do you will be thankful that you have it!

Overall, I would give it a thumbs up!

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4-24-2005