Being Ford uses wire as a fuse link, how do you handle a fuse burning out if you are on a road trip?
Fusible links are not the same type of wire found elsewhere in your car. Fusible links are made using low temperature melting stranded wire. One might think of a fusible link as a bundle of slow blow fuses. They rarely fail and almost never without sufficient reason. To answer your question more directly, if you were to be on a trip and one blew out, trace the cause of the long term high current draw and then, and ONLY then, replace the fusible link. Short term use of small fuses is perfectly fine for trouble shooting, but bypassing a failed fusible link for any other reason is foolish and ill-advised.
If you loose a fuse link you will need a TOW TRUCK. That means you have a sereyous short. Or drawing way to much current in that particular circuit. Normally the ignition system and battery feeds are on separate circuits.
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Can the fusable links be replaced by manual reset breakers?
Ace is the place! But you might have to go to Home Depot for the fuse box. (lol)
Daminc,
You got me wondering about that. Have you ever seen any manual reset breakers that are small enough to fit in line? Where would you get them, Mouser, Allied Elect.? What I would like to see is a conversion list going from 20 gauge fuse link to __ amp fuse. What are you guys who race using?
Yes and also a wire 2 sizes smaller then the wire it protects. Also i use a maxi fuse holder and a maxi fuse.There are all kinds of resettable fuses ATC regular and ATC maxi resettable.
Here is a sample of plug and play breakers. They come in all different amperage sizes. The one with the buttons are resettable. The other one is automatic reset!! They fit a standard ATC socket.
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I will disagree once again,, and hope this is the last time but.... i cant help myself everytime i see it happen i have to speak more truth than what is being advertised.
There is just as much possibility that a fuse link could become open without a reasonble cause other than simple poor engineering, heat , corrosion or simple wear and tear.
If i follow to the T what as been advertised as the "rule", then everytime my light bulb blows in my house, i should not install a light bulb until i find something else other than the bulb to blame. thin filliment light bulbs in an AC engineered circuit sort of "shake" a little until they vibrate upto and hold 60hz at 120vac. Typically a bulb will blow when you first turn it on because its finally experienced a weak spot due to this vibration.
More in line ,,, if your car headlamp bulb blows or even a tail lamp for that matter, and we follow the "rule", then we should not install a new bulb until we find something else to blame other than the bulb.
same goes for the ignition switch in that if it burns up, we should not put in a new one until we determine some other fualt other than the ignition switch.
hows about the power seat switch, if it burns out and keeps tripping the breaker, we should not install a new switch until we find another fault.
turth of the matter is,,, over time the fuse links big round black plastic heat shrink covers at each end can allow some corrosion to start. with corrrosion comes resistance and a voltage drop. now we have two ingredients to form watts.
The real deal is that 8 out of 10 times, when a fuse blows, there is another downstream fault but not always. In my experience just handling / bending or dressing in the wiring along the coil is reducing its life span. When a physical fuse blows, the likelyhood there is a further fault downstream of the fuse is almost 100% and the fuse replacement will not cure the issue.
i have personally inspected to the component level each piece of a burned out fuse link no less than 8 times to see what happened and where.
Each time on 5 fuse links iirc, the fault occured where the wire had been bent exceeding the **BEND RADIUS** of a conductor. In this area would be corrosion and discoloration from heat. At the oem welds at the connection points, there would be corrosion also on a couple i looked at. i have had 3 fuse link failures in my Fox's specifically and in all three cases, one case caused me to move further upstream to find out why and the Ign switch was the root.
not always but in "some cases" when a fuse link blows, it doesnt mean you certainly and undoubtably have unquestionable issues other than the fuse link.
It all has to do with the original engineering , circulair millimeters of copper with respect to temperature rise as well as constant exposure to extreem enviromental conditions these fuse links are constantly exposed to.
I have a death wish here so i will say it.....
stop using stranded solid conductor fuse links and use "FLEX" instead in the same guage. Also insure you use 90deg or 125degC wire with oil resistant insulation then solder the new conductor in place.
the oem fuse links are typically two or three approx 26awg individual conductors to combine as 2580circular millimetes of copper when speaking to 16ga.
The flex equivilent would consist of a couple dozen 40awg or smaller hairs of copper all combined to slightly exceed 2580circular millimeters of coppper.
With more ROUND conductors stuffed in the same area, you have less air gaps, more copper redunduncy and overall a more dependable wire that can be handled and bent around with the human hand without effecting its bend radius ect.
I don"t AGREE fully but i will let it slide. Either way i have one thing to say JAY. TRUE FUSE LINK WIRE CAN'T BE SOLDERED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! With that i will let this rest. By the way fuse links are no longer used in modern cars. I have some rolls of TRUE LINK wire in the shop somewhere. I will have to dig it out to prove a point that is nagging at me. Also when a link blows more times than not it is a large current draw most likely Not all the time but mostly that is the cause. Bad comparison with the bulb. Other than that have a good day my brother call you soon . Great weekend Jay
The real deal is that 8 out of 10 times, when a fuse blows, there is another downstream fault but not always.
This is a reasonable estimation for fuses but not likely. More like 99-1. But with heavy curent links you need heavy current draw. Vinnie found this out with his pinched wire ETC !! Fuse links are pretty reliable when they are not over loaded. Either way be good JAY
Or it's something down-circuit that is so radically intermittent, that after replacing the fuse you never see it again.
Foe i am going to say that most fuse link failures are from high current draws intermittent or hard. And most fuse links feed things like fuse panels that break the circuits down to smaller fuses. Like the breaker panel in your house. The main breaker is 200A and subsequent brakers are much smaller. When was the last time anyone blew a main breaker when overloading an outlet. NOT HAPPENING.
I agree with you on this one FOE
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If the fuse link is open in a small area or at the crimp then it could be a bad link(probably a one in a 1000), but if the entire length is scorched you can bet a short did the damage, simple really...
+++ 1000% That is exactly correct in my view also!!
the factory production connections were cad welded.
if your soldering correctly and doing a "Western Union" bond, there should be no issue even if some of the solder melts. if you have enough solder that melts away to cause a problem, then its not being soldered right. Melting temps aside, i couldnt imagine any other acceptable means of connection without introducing air pockets of possible corrosion.
these fuse links are really a big deal, anything other than a chemical or electrical bond would introduce an eventual voltage drop... i just cant trust those butt splices in an area like this.
my point mainly was poor wiring engineering in that we have 80% of all fuses on one 16awg fuse link. check it out, ckt 37 on the 2.3, 3.8 and 5.0.
its just a bit much to swallow and call it "ok"
"how" was vinnies wire "pinched"?
bonded to ground or bent such that it was pinched?
other than the connection method, i reall dont see what you disagree with on my comments.
sure i agree on fuses, you quoted me, but i feel the engineering "as- engineered" could be better so thats why we figure things out and make it so.
Jay i hear you. But in reality i only had maybe 2-3 fuse links that blew in my entire career from no causes. The rest of them had hard shorts. I did a current loaded test on fuse links and a 16G link can handle some heavy current loads. Case in point just look at an 60 Amp maxi fuse and see how actually thin the fusing portion is. not very much. Also count the links on lets say a TURBO COUPE. Their are 9 i think to power up the entire car. Now the stock alt is around 65 Amps on a coupe. And they work. Even the loads of the back light defroster runs through the links. Basically they have a very high current capacity. Also as you point out they are spot welded of sorts and once again this is because TRUE LINK wire can't be soldered. I have tried many times. I do not use crimp connectors on anything. They suck. Today i am going to the shop and do some messing around with links. Thanks and have a good Sunday Jay always a pleasure hashing things out with you. I really enjoy swapping ideas with you even wh we are on different wave lengths Thanks Tom
"other than the connection method, i really don't see what you disagree with on my comments.
sure i agree on fuses, you quoted me, but i feel the engineering "as- engineered" could be better so thats why we figure things out and make it so."
Exactly! When an issue is brought to light and everyone is looking for a solution to that problem, you will almost always have idea's spanning from one end of the spectrum to the other. That's why I enjoy this forum, the people here have a vast amount of knowledge and experience ranging from one end to the other. We truly do have some great minds here that I believe have and will always come up with better ideas.
Ok i get it now here is my final post to you 86
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So dramatic. I'm sure I'll be seeing your post a lot.
not really, i have a handful of examples that span over several years and including anything i run into on this board.
the same probably comes and goes in a month for you.
the only time I have had to replace fuseable links, is when the battery was swapped backwards. Where they are all easily swapped, I really don't see an issue with them, as is.
Stacks how true!!! That is a fact. Years back i hired a trade school kid from his senior year. You know he worked for me like 4 hours a day instead of shop in school. Well we had a range rover you know the ones that they use in AFRICA the big ones with the ladder that goes to the roof. Their are from what i understand only a hand full in this country. I told the kid to bring it in to the shop. Well after a half hour i saw the kid in a cold sweat. He explained to me the battery was dead and he jumped it with the jumper box. Well BACKWARDS. HOLY Nothing in the car worked. So this car had maxi fuses and none were BLOWN. I back fed the fuses and NOTHING.They were all good but nothing came on with the ignition. You could not even crank it. So their was a fuse panel under the radio and all the fuses were DEAD. Make a long story short he burnt out the IGNITION SWITCH. HOLY none available in the US and the dealer told me i had to actually cut the dash braces out then the steering column had to be hacked up to fix it. DOG DOOTS!!!!! I WAS OUT OF MY MIND!!! So i had JR remove the dash he actually had to cut the braces out. I managed to remove the switch part of the ignition switch and took it apart. I repaired the burnt contacts with an oil burner controller. I took the contacts and made them fit the switch. They were thinner so i slaved out the switch cranking circuits and aux and accessory contacts. After 2 weeks of modifying the thing and JR fabricating a removable dash frame the thing ran perfectly. What a NIGHT MARE. You bet STACKS reversed battery's are the pits and devastating to say the lease. I did not fire the kid . I have dun some dumb things in my life so i asked God to give me patience. And he did. I made the kid clean the shop for a week. He did it without a complaint. Yes reversed battery's SUCK BIG TIME
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