1982 300SD Fuse Wiring Mystery

[bustedbenz]

Hello, all. Very "long time, no see" but I am going to try to get back involved here again.

I'm working on a 1982 300SD (w126) and trying to clean up a mess in the screw down connections under the fuse box. Some of it is my own fault (took a few wires loose in order to get access to install the blower motor relocation kit and forgot where they go back so now I get to trace those) but I also suspect previous mechanics of getting things a little bit wrongly as well.

I may have some additional questions but my first one is this. Can someone help me understand what's going on with fuse 15 and fuse C being linked together? C is for the electric aux cooling fan for the engine and 15 is for door lights among other things. They aren't the same amp rating. But these fuses are connected together at one end of the terminals by a metal strip that has been screwed down to bridge the two circuits together. There is *nothing else* connected to the terminals that has the crossover link screwed into them.

This would "almost" make sense to me if they were using one high current capacity feed from the battery to power both circuits by screwing down to one and crossing over to the other... but neither of these has anything screwed down to it at all except that bridge. Which means that any 12v feed would be coming from the other end, which would mean that the low amperage fuse for circuit 15 would be in the circuit with the higher draw of the aux fan which makes no sense at all. It would basically be limiting the current of the aux fan to the lower of the two fuses if I'm not mistaken and that can't possibly be what was intended.

Any thoughts on what I'm seeing here, bearing in mind that tomfoolery by others working on this car in the past is a strong possibility? Why would C and 15 be bridged together at one end under the fuse box and how does this circuit actually work if it was intentional?