Wednesday 15 November 2017

Car fuse splitters - warning!

I needed to add an extra item to one of my car fuses recently, this was to power my daylight running LEDs (DRLs) and so I found the easiest option was to wire into the ACC fused function in the fusebox. In my car it's in the bonnet to the side so exactly where I need it.

A colleague recommended a nifty fuse splitter that he'd used previously. You take the existing fuse (mini spade fuse on mine) and replaced it with the splitter, which contains two fuses (the original and new one) and a flying lead with crimp connector on. Ideal for this sort of job! (Just be careful not to overload the fuse outlet as the fuse holders were only rated for the original, so an original 20amp if you use 2x20amp and it pulls all 20amp each of them the fuse socket will carry 40amp so may be too much for the wiring, etc!).
So I searched ebay and found what I wanted:


As you can see these are nifty little units, plug them in and add your new fuse. They do go at an angle so it may be tricky to fit in place depending on the size of fuse holder, whats around it, etc, but that should work great.

Unfortunately my cheap-ness then cut in and I started looking for cheaper than £4.49 for 4.
I found some for £3.79 for 4 and with faster delivery, so I duly ordered them. However when they arrived, I think I found why they were cheaper!



The fuse pins themselves have additional plastic around them, almost to the full depth of the pins, so these won't push into a regular mini fuse holder. In addition the fuse sockets on the device itself also have poor connectors and don't hold the fuses properly in place, not securely enough for them not to rattle out during normal driving.
You can see on the photo above the black plastic tab that extends down to the full length of the pins, rendering these useless!
I tried to cut away at this plastic to make them useful, but this ended up with the whole thing exploding and the pins not being secured, so in the end I've given up for now.

Will buy the better ones at some point and do this job again properly!
BTW naming and shaming the dodgy ones the ebay item id is 122558391093.

NOTE: To be fair, now I've looked at the pictures of the ebay sale item they do show this plastic lip, so the photos are accurate!

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