Replacing "short wire" in immersion heater

[boilingpoint]

Hi,

This morning, I found that my immersion heater had stopped working. The short wire that runs from the thermostat to the live terminal of the heater had fried (or at least its insulation did) and disconnected from the terminal pin.

Although I've scavenged a replacement wire from an old immersion heater, there's no obvious way of attaching it. (The heater came with the wire permanently fixed in place.)

Is it safe to solder the wire to the terminal pin? Any other options?

In the photo, it's the pin with the blue base.

 

[ShaunCorbs]

Both chances are you wouldn’t get a good enough connection from the post also you wouldn’t be able to put the lid on

 

[steadyon]

1. While the porcelain would probably take the heat, the constant expansion and contraction would almost certainly cause the screw to go loose fairly quickly.
2. If you had the equipment you could silver solder the cable to the element connector. Ordinary solder won't do, it couldn't take the heat of any arcing at the contact point or nearby.

 

[w0z]

Can you get a better photo of the weld from the side. If you're going to attempt to solder it the existing would need to be filed down to clean bare metal to get any chance of a decent joint that would last, and it would have to be wrapped with tinned single core and soldered over for added future stress-proofing. Does the bit that's sticking out look like you could drill a very small hole in it?
Also silicone wire insulation would be required (or better still you could heatshrink it afterwards with a couple of layers.) It's not going to be easy to solder and it will act as a heatsink so will be difficult to get it to temperature.