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Fuses! What good are they?
by
Eddie Runner (NU5K)
Fuses are protectors!
In our car electronics (heck, any electronics!) when voltage is used
and current flows down a wire or though a device some heat is created, sometimes
only a little that’s barely noticeable and sometimes quite a bit and the device gets warm and maybe even hot. Basically the more current
that flows the more heat that’s created! So if too much current flows
then the wire or device can get so hot it can melt nearby items (or the device under power itself) or actually catch fire! We certainly don’t
want that happening while we are driving down the freeway listening to our tunes! So, basically everything in our automobiles is protected by
fuses (or should be!).
Typically a headunit we might install in our car might only draw a few
amps of current, usually not nearly enough to get very hot or to heat up
our wiring!
Why do we need a fuse if the unit will only draw just a few amps??
Simple! Under normal operating conditions the unit might only draw a
few amps of current and will never run hot enough to cause a problem
with heat.. But, it’s the not normal operations the fuses protect us
from!! It’s the unpredictable bad possibilities our fuses protect us
from!! If for instance while your head unit is being installed, or
removed in the future if for some reason the power wire were to touch
the metal behind the dash of the car, or the metal chassis of the radio
(which is ground) the power wire will be shorted, causing a huge amount of current to flow from the car battery in a very short time! Without a
fuse the average headunit power wire will heat and melt and maybe even turn RED HOT in just a few seconds!! The plastic insulation will melt
off the wire and much smoke will be created quickly! The red hot wire will also likely melt into any other wire in the car it is touching
possibly causing other things in the car to possibly have its own separate short circuit!! The red hot wire might also cause the car
carpet or other things in the car to catch fire!!
By simply putting a fuse in the wire near the battery or the point where
you get the power for your device, could prevent this nasty scenario
from happening to you… A fuse is simply a short and small diameter piece
of wire designed to melt away before the bad things can happen to you!
A fuse is usually mounted in a protective glass or plastic housing so
that the small melted particles don’t spill out if the fuse blows.
A device in our cars like a headunit usually has a 5 or 10 amp fuse,
which is designed to blow (and disconnect the circuit when it does
blow) at the 5 or 10 amp heat range which should be more than our
headunit needs for normal operations but less than what will start a
fire in this small sized wire of the headunit.. So, under normal
operations the fuse will never be used (other than a conductor) while if
the unexpected ever happens and our circuit is overloaded, the fuse will
blow so a fire will not start!
A large amplifier in our car might need a much higher fuse value because
under normal operations it might draw 30 or 60 amps (or more) … We usually also use a larger sized wire for our amplifiers so that the wire
does not heat up (larger wire can take more heat) but since the wire can
still catch fire in a short circuit condition, then we must always fuse it to protect it…
There are also other ways these bad things can happen! An unexpected car accident can easily push a bent piece of metal into a power wire!
We prefer the fuse to blow than a fire to start! There are many other
causes as well as simple as a headunit or amplifier that just goes bad!
There can be internal problems causing internal shorts that could cause melted wires or fire if the wire is not fused! Who knows why these
things happen? But is better to be safe and fuse that wire than to be sorry and coughing in your smoke filled car later!!
It’s important that everything we install into our cars is protected by
fuses!
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