Fuse did not do its job
- Thread starter BeerCan
- Start date
JHZR2
Staff member
Yikes. I think there was a recall on fuses sometime back, maybe even another thread where someone encountered this?
Not sure at this point. It melted together so I still haven't looked at it.
The issue was probably a poor connection to the fuse holder after the fuse. Poor dc connections get super hot in my experience. I actually use a thermal camera on my big dc batteries to check for poor connections.
A fuse often won't prevent a fire on a component, especially a connection with high resistance. What it will do is protect the wiring from being overloaded.
I've seen many atc /ato fuse holders do this.
The terminals holding the fuses are flag terminals. Brass, as copper is not springy enough for multiple.insertion/removals.
Brass has much more resistance than copper, and how well the crimp is made within the molded plastic fuse holder is highly questionable.
After one failure i pulled on wires on as yet unused 12 awg atc ato holders and the wires on 2 of the remaining 7 easily pulled out of the fuse holding portion, and the copper wire looked old and oxidized, and nowhere near the 12awg advertised.
I started making my own after that.
The terminals holding the fuses are flag terminals. Brass, as copper is not springy enough for multiple.insertion/removals.
Brass has much more resistance than copper, and how well the crimp is made within the molded plastic fuse holder is highly questionable.
After one failure i pulled on wires on as yet unused 12 awg atc ato holders and the wires on 2 of the remaining 7 easily pulled out of the fuse holding portion, and the copper wire looked old and oxidized, and nowhere near the 12awg advertised.
I started making my own after that.
The fuse was made in Italy? Or the holder?
That wasn't caused by an overload and that's why the fuse didn't blow. That was caused by a loose connection that got hot and melted that part of the fuse holder. The F-150s have been having the same problem with (IIRC) fuse f-10, the fuel pump fuse, for many years now. Apparently one of the contacts for f10 wasn't crimped tightly to it's wire and that joint overheats and melts that one end of f-10 and occasionaly part of the fuse block as well.
