I had to include John Sandhoff's comments for the list, since several
people have mentioned this problem, and John's comments sounded
enlightening and conclusive. (You didn't want me to be the sole
beneficiary of your wisdom, did you, John?) :-)
For my part, I clipped out my bad inline fuse holder, took it apart,
cleaned the connectors, and rewired it, soldering the fresh wire in.
Then I patched it back into the line. Results? Not hot! I do feel
some warmth on the fuse when I have the lights on, but nothing like
before, which was really wire-baking temperature. Is a little warmth
reasonable? It's just a spring-loaded fuse holder, so maybe there needs
to be a tighter connection to the fuse itself.
Thanks for the help, everybody! You're a fine bunch.
-John Stromgren (1970 2000)
sandhoff@csus.edu wrote:
> You lamented, while measuring resistance in your fuse box:
>
>>(touching one needle to a connector tab and the other to the
>>corresponding wire coming out of the box).
>
>
> Test the resistance between the metal tab where the wire actually
> connects, and the actual prong that the fuse clips into. No fair using
> the rivet itself as a test point!
>
> Corrosion forms between the metal tab and the rivet, and the
> fuse clip and the rivet. You can't clean it 'cause the problem
> is where the pieces are crimped together. Banging on it will
> maybe help for awhile, but again the real problem - the thin
> thin thin layer of corrosion between the parts - is still there.
>
> I finally hooked a new inline fuse holder between the actual
> physical wires that originally connected to the fuse box, bypassing
> all of the pieces of the box entirely.
>
> Oh.. headlights are about 55 W each, high beam. P = E * I, so you're
> pulling 10 amps (more with the tail lights, but let's just go with ten).
> If there's a tenth of an ohm resistance, E = I * R so you're losing a
> volt. That loss goes somewhere, and that somewhere is into heat,
> about 10 watts right at that junction.
>
> -- John
> John F Sandhoff sandhoff@csus.edu Sacramento, CA
>
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John E. Stromgren
141 Eastwood Drive
Portsmouth, NH 03801-6071
603-431-5172
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