Hi Art,

It interesting that you have commented on the idea of soldering the traces on that connection, when I can honestly say, that you have recommended remelting solder joints due to cracking or flux corrosion.
Cracking doesn’t seem so soft to me or at least not as soft as the copper on a plastic film on top of a fiberGLASS substrate. So your point is, there’s a softness there and with the prongs I guess!

As far as solder being soft, it’s not really so, as it’s a mixture of other metals like tin for an example and it’s another science to some extent, that’s taken for granted.
Today we are trying to find better alternatives and we have seen those results have pan out in many areas besides in relay boards.

Warning! I headed into a story, look out!
Plating copper with another element is common place or at least it wasn’t in the early seventies.
When I, an E4, in the Navy, I was given two bottles of solutions to use to plate over the top of an AC generators copper slip rings.
A bottle contained an ion solution of Rhodium.
At that time that quart bottle of Rhodium was $600. No idea how much but I was electroplating. Neat stuff!
We then added on a thinner coating of gold on top of that. I believe gold was the cheaper element?
Since we were underway, at the time, I wasn’t going anywhere with it!
I also got to watching the solution moving in the pan.
I experienced my first Sea sickness.
I was told by my seniors, DON’T WATCH the liquid, but don’t let it spill either?
I knew why I got the job! Some sailors were sick-o’s in several ways!

The whole purpose of this procedure was to create a wear surface on top of the copper.
A final gold treatment was applied as to wear into the carbon brushes for lubrication, let alone the conduction.
Today carbon brushes are made with a great deal of different mixtures for special purposes.
It is a science all to itself.

If you want to know more about carbon brushes try this site.
https://www.mersen.com/uploads/tx_mersen/5-carbon-brush-technical-guide-mersen_07.pdf
I have known about them since the mid eighties.

I worked on a steam turbine deck in Long Beach for So. Cal Edison. I got to crawl around in between the windings, the outer housing of a GE AC dynamo installing a modification of steel belly bands
to help keep the windings from ringing. Some design revision that was!

I was a lot thinner then and I was volunteered, if I wasn’t Claustrophobic!
Guess I hadn’t learned from my Navy days!

I was a natural for it though, as right after I got out of the Navy, I worked for a company that machined three Dynamo housing for Westinghouse, in NY!
They went from there to a new Dam in Brazil of the mid seventies.
I imagine those dynamos are obsolete by now!

Metal plating over a softer substrate is common place. Look a the passing “ART” of chroming things!
Brass and copper helped seal the deal against ferrous metals.
Lead was used to make car bodies straight before BONDO polyester fillers.
Lead has been a double edge sword for humanity for quite some time!

Solder is more readily available to us to use than Rhodium or gold so I suggested it as a bed for those clam shaped prongs.
Yes, adding more tension is a wonderful suggestion but you are slipping the contact right back onto a compressed copper and plastic substrate that is as tired as those prongs.

I was thinking that that surfaces needed a plating job to rebuild the valleys or depressions.
If the solder is as soft as you I and I imagine the prongs will be in a trench.

To me that creates a better contact surface connection irregardless of tightness that’s going to restart is progress all over again.
It just something to try, since we don’t have Gold and Rhodium in our pocket books, like the Navy contractors did!
Tricky things have always been done with the taxpayer money.
Right along with many a turned heads, under wiggled eyebrows and winked eyeballs!

Luckily, these old cars can show us that things need not to be so complicated.
The 240 had a good bunch of thoughts come together!
I wish and think, that the transition over to less fossil fuels can be done a lot simpler, if we think harder and plan better!

We have lost our way in wars, because of underground tenacity and when simplicity’s are sought it can do everything better.

For a wisdom adage,
A thin coating, underneath can go a long ways, every time!

Cutting tools with their coatings have revolutionized the production of products!

Sorry about the long story, but hey, it’s Veterans Day!
I felt that My horn needed some tooting!. I have no kids to care.

Phil