Date:         Sun, 1 Apr 2007 21:10:58 EDT
Reply-To:     Oxroad@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jeff Oxroad <Oxroad@AOL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Never seen this before..Fuses melted..
Comments: To: dhanson@GORGE.NET
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

In a message dated 4/1/2007 5:38:15 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
dhanson@GORGE.NET writes:

>>Anybody wanna comment?

I wanna. And I'm gonna. And even without too much useful knowledge. But I'm
procrastinating on a work project and this seems a good distraction.

That fuse, operating the blower motor and wipers, is notoriously overtaxed.
Mine fuse box has the battle scars of a slight fire suffered by the previous
owner on that fuse. The previous owner on my rig rewired the blower motor and
the wipers so they are on different fuses--external fuses added outside the
stock fuse box. A lot of bus owners have done the same I understand.

Someone with more electrical aplomb will chime in on how you can do the fix.

But in short, (no pun intended) what I am contributing is a: don't get too
worried. It happens all the time.

But you should take steps to eliminate the overload.

As for the fuse melting probably a cheapness in the manufacturing so the
thing was plastic. That's not the real problem here, though.

By upping the recommended amperage of that fuse you unwittingly upped the
chances of an electrical fire. And you allowed a situation in which the fuse got
hot enough to melt (read: hot enough to get you a nice cozy  electrical fire
in your dashboard). As a rule of thumb you really shouldn't tax the wiring by
upping the fuse amperage or wrapping the fuse in aluminum foil or in any other
way overriding the functionality of a fused system. If you have a hot or
constantly blowing fuse the cause needs to be found and corrected.

Remember fuses in their recommended amperage are designed to cut off the
electric flow to keep things from catching on fire. The purpose of upping the
amperage over what is specified is to cause one.

No sweat. You got a little lucky. Good luck on the rewire.

Best,
Jeff
83.5 Westy
LA,CA



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