Fuse problem, What would cause this?
 

The plastic part of the fuse melted but the metal was still intact? 16A fuse/red.

http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/g...meltedfuse.jpg

someting was drawing toooooo much amperage and it got really hot. Could this have been the fuse that controls your Blower motor?

It is not blower fuse as it is a flat fuse outside the fuse box on a SDL.

The fuse is not sitting well/bad contact in the fuse holder and it generates heat and melt the plastic. I think the amperage is OK and within range. Clean the fuse holder with a fine sand paper, replace the fuse and it should be OK.

Aux. fan.

The weird thing is that the metal in the fuse never broke and the fan was (is) still working.

So, I'm guessing my fan is on the way out, needs a new bearing, brushes or something...

The older these fans get, the more amperage they draw.

That as above, and a plastic bodied fuse. Use only the copper filament and ceramic body type.

Where do I get these things? I see that most of them in there are ceramic and new. Only a couple plastic ones.

Try Phil and Roy (Buy Parts at the top of the web page). They sponsor this forum.

Normally I would. I buy parts from here all the time.

I need to fix this today.

Check the fuse holder contacts. A poor connection can cause the contact to heat and melt the fuse like that.

As the heat distorted the plastic the terminal and fuse end temperature increased. Like a vicious circle this continued until contact was lost.

Does not indicate that another problem is present. In order to minumise contact resistance that is increasing with time. Clean the fuse ends and contact points well. Adding a small amount of dialectric paste to lessen or eliminate future oxidation.

Kind of a preventative maintenance item verging on restoration when cars become as old as ours. It never should hurt to do this even on any old car. It is preventative.

Also may save some protected component from a low voltage situation existing. This is also something that should be done with existing ground connections. The important item again is the dialectric paste so future trouble is not probable. You can benifit instantly if some resistance is already present but not enough to disable things. I never make an electrical repair on a car without protecting the relevent terminations etc.

I could not fnd any locally, (Auto Zoo, O'Reilly, NAPA) so I had to special order them.

Here is a temp fix idea...locate a ceramic holder you have currently (say from rear defroster), swap out the appropriate filament. Then order the correct fuses.

Ceramic holder is not your answer and it has a long lead time if you have to special order. It is bad connection as per other members opinion. Just clean the fuse holder, do what other members suggested and put a good plastic fuse in ( copper or aluminium are the SAME ). Mercedes has been using plastic fuses for a long time. You can change it out later if you really want to go with ceramic.

Good luck.

Because of the melted connection the contact is obviously worse (black).

I'll pull them all, clean the contacts and apply dielectric grease to the tips. Every relay or contact I have pulled in this car, I have put the grease on.

Thanks for the quick reply's.

Aluminum fuses have a bad habit of corroding where they contact e holder. When that happens, resistance increases until the heat melts the plastic fuse holder or the connection is degraded to the point that current fails to flow.

Copper and aluminum may be the SAME is some ways (like both being metal), but copper or bronze fuses are much better choices than aluminum. There have been a number of electrical problems reported on this forum which were directly attributable to aluminum fuses.