Burning Smell

[Treyz]

OK .. looked at the fuse holder .. yeah totally melted (anything plastic). the 15amp blade fuse that was in there is stuck to the holder.

Conclusions could either be a bad crimp as stated above or that the fuse itself got so hot, that it couldn't melt to blow (as it should) and just melted everything around it. I literally opened the thing and the plastic around the fuse was melted. Anything metal stayed in tact.

The guage wire used is 16 I believe.

Any suggestions? Should I up the amp? Lower the amp? I mean obviously I'm going to get another blade fuse holder. Or should I get a mini blade fuse?

[CTScott]

Originally Posted by Treyz

OK .. looked at the fuse holder .. yeah totally melted (anything plastic). the 15amp blade fuse that was in there is stuck to the holder.

Conclusions could either be a bad crimp as stated above or that the fuse itself got so hot, that it couldn't melt to blow (as it should) and just melted everything around it. I literally opened the thing and the plastic around the fuse was melted. Anything metal stayed in tact.

The guage wire used is 16 I believe.

Any suggestions? Should I up the amp? Lower the amp? I mean obviously I'm going to get another blade fuse holder. Or should I get a mini blade fuse?

16 AWG wire is rated for 10 Amps, so the wire is a bit thin for the fuse rating. If the lights are 50W each, then they would draw approximately 4.2 Amps each, so you could drop to a 10A fuse to match the wire gauge.

Since just the fush holder is melted, I would bet that the real issue was a bad wire crimp. If the wire was significantly undersized the wire itself would have been warm or hot to the touch as well.