I guess we've become accustomed to, how shall we say, optimistic pricing on 'Classic' car parts, but this one takes the cake. A set of ten car fuses - Motorcraft not Lucas as claimed - for £70! Seven quid for a fuse - be interesting to see if he gets any takers.

I've got some fuses which are already blown (which means you don't have to risk damaging your electrics) - and I'm only asking £2 each for them.

I've got some you can for half that price and free postage !!!

Nick

About 10 years ago now, I had been stocking up on new pattern pre war style fuses from Tim Hodgekiss as they did genuinely fit that age of fuse box better than the newer types. An auction listing on ebay was for a packet of original Lucas ones and they made decent money, far far more than the new ones. At that time, you could contact other members on ebay easily and being curious, I wrote to the buyer to say "what am I missing that made these worth so much to you".

It turned out that the buyer was a youngish girl whose father had a Morris 8 and she'd been looking for a car related present for him so bought the fuses. The seller got lucky. One of the hard things to sometimes accept about the internet and the free market is that people can offer anything legal at whatever price they fancy and just because it's up for sale, there's no guarantee that the price asked in any way relates to either the value of the item, the manufacturing cost or the price another seller may be asking. It always pays to research what items cost elsewhere but it's amazing the people who just buy the first listing they find under the assumption that there won't be too much difference in the price.

A question I have never been able to answer is "How do you test if a fuse is accurately rated"?

If it's rated (say) 10 amps - and you pass ten amps through it and it blows - this proves its is (or was) a good fuse - but then it is useless.

So how do you test a fuse?

Poor old fuses. They get no reward for doing their job properly - as soon as they do, they've failed......

Another bargain or is it.

A friend of mine has an Iveco van that he uses to tow his racecar, well a few weeks ago one of the rear lights was out and he found a 5A fuse blown. After replacing the fuse all seemed ok for a few days and then the fuse blew again. As usual he was short of time and replaced it again with his last fuse.
He then ordered a mixed set of fuses off Ebay as backup, sure enough the fuse blew again and was replaced with an Ebay 5A fuse.
He set off to Mallory then the fuse box stated letting smoke out.
Luckily he had a battery cutout switch and he speedily isolated the battery.
It was found that the Ebay fuse which should have blown did not as the gauge of fusible link in all the fuses irrespective of rating, would carry about 60 amps and the only difference between the fuses was the colour of the plastic.
He advised Ebay and trading standards but I guess there are still a lot of these fuses around.
So beware..

Just out of interest the intermittent fault was found to be one of the tow bar electric connections that had lost its insulation.

Steve.

Stan Thomas wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2019 9:32 am A question I have never been able to answer is "How do you test if a fuse is accurately rated"?
If it's rated (say) 10 amps - and you pass ten amps through it and it blows - this proves its is (or was) a good fuse - but then it is useless.
So how do you test a fuse?

I realise that this is a very old post, but having seen it, I can't let it pass without a comment.

The rating of fuses normally indicates the current it can pass indefinitely.
The current at which a fuse will blow depends not just on the amount of current, but also the fuse design, ambient temperature and how long the current is passing.
In fact it's impossible to give a meaningful answer as a single number, but only by a graph showing its characteristics.
A major influence on the current/time curves is the fuse type... fast-blow, anti-surge, time-delay and variations of all of those.

The hypothetical 10A fuse mentioned above is unlikely to blow until the current approaches 20A, but as I say... if you really need to know, consult the manufacturer's graphs.