what did I do wrong?

If you have it the type of wire that Rkcstr puts on his drivers is ideal.
The wire will not "go in" as there is no hole to go in, if you look carefully the 2 pins you are tryiing to solder too have a black resin ring around them to insulate the pin from the case.
For the neg you are trying to bridge that to the case for no other reason than to make the first connection easy.

The second connection is the hard one as you must not bridge the black ring.

Regards rog8811

Telephone wire works good for this type of repair

I found a small bit of copper wire, but i just cant get the solder to stay on good, then when i try and get the wire into the solder it moves the blob too much.

Im taking a break to cool the soldering iron then im guna clean it and try again, im already sick and I was in my cold garage for like an hour my LD is prolly dead by now.

I think i'll just call this project a failure.

I got a new set-up I want to try but i have no voltage coming out of my driver now???