Alternator / Voltage Regulator

[davids2toys]

Sorry for the late post, been a totally crazy week here!

Originally Posted by patrickt

Yes, it would be easier to change. But the whole idea behind a fusible link is that it will only blow if there is something big time wrong and, most likely, it will require a tow back home and some time on the lift to find out why it blew. It is not designed, nor is it intended, to be a "quickie fixable" item. As I said in a previous post, I have never, ever, ever had to actually replace a fusible link in any of my cars... including the super-charged GTP that blew its oil all over the engine bay while I was driving, caught on fire, had flames coming out from under the hood, and every damn dashboard light there was started blinking and dying. Even with the car being a total loss from the fire, the fusible link still worked.

50 amps probably wouldn't even make the wire itself smoke, but there would likely be some smoke coming from around the fault location itself (because of the higher resistance on the fault). If I was really lucky, it might even "burn itself free" of the fault, like power lines will sometimes do with tree limbs, but probably not. The circuit breaker would be clicking on and off and I would be standing there with my thumb up my... thinking "hmmmm, I wonder what's wrong and what the hell is that clicking sound?" Then I would put my finger on the circuit breaker and feel it clicking on and off. At that point I would disconnect the battery via the quick disconnect gizmo on the negative battery terminal and the clicking would stop. I would then wiggle some wires, reconnect the battery, the circuit breaker would start clicking again, and I would call for a tow.

First quote:
Yeah, I hear you and I knew that...bad choice of words on my part. What I meant to say was that it would be a lot easier to change a fuse after the problem is fixed rather than replacing a fusible link

Second quote:
LOL...This is way to much thinking for me at a time when I could be doing some nice damage. I think I would rather just have something blow(fuse or fusible link wire). From your earlier post on that same line of thinking, why does ERA put that auto resetting CB there? Why would you want that trying to reset itself when obviously it had something bad going on to trip it off. I would think the kind that lets you reset it manually would be a better idea so you could try and troubleshoot it before trying to manually reset it? I'm thinking I might replace that auto resetting CB with the manual type you had mentioned.