does anyone know how i can fix my fuse for rear lights? it keep blowing out for no reason... what could it be?

 

i love ur name and i have the same prob too.. my rear tail lamp keeps going out and i've tried many types of bulbs..

 

look in your manual... find out the normal voltage/amp/resistance readings for the light. grab yourself a fluke (multi-meter) and check what your real reading are in comparison. you have to do the voltage and amp checks with power to the lights. do NOT do resistance checks with power applied.
check the lights at the assembly first. if the reading are incorrect then trace it back to the wires comming out of the fuse box.
if it is correct then there is a problem in the wiring from the fuse box to the assembly. if it is incorrect then trace it from there to just before the fuse box and so on.
you should be able to figure it out that way. if there are any problem shoot me an email with your number and a good time to call. i should be able to step you through it over the phone. good luck

 

be sure to turn off your car before you attach the leads. connect the leads, take your hands away, then apply power. voltage aint sh*!, but the lowest recorded death by amperage is .030 milli amps. your car runs a hell of a lot more than that.

 

AC, DC won't do alot to you with only 12 volts.. maybe if you touch it with a tender section of skin it will start to tingle. YOu have a short somewhere, where, I don't know... atleast that's my initial guess

 

know your electronics..... voltage and current are inversly proportional but voltage and resistance are directly proportional. so low volts either ac or dc will create a higher amperage. who cares about voltage shocks. ive taken thousands. but amps friggin hurt like hell.

ohms law - “The amount of current flowing in a circuit made up of pure resistances is directly proportional to the electromotive forces impressed on the circuit and inversely proportional to the total resistance of the circuit.”

http://webhome.idirect.com/~jadams/electronics/ohm.htm educate yourselves on electronics

 

yes, but DC flows over surfaces, whereas AC will flow in them. That's why DC power wires are multi-strands of fine wire, and AC lines (like those in your house) can be solid. AC will hurt/kill you alot easier than DC.. not saying that laying your arm on your battery terminals and having your inner elbow complete the circuit doesn't give you a tingly feeling after a few seconds....

 

totally agree that ac will wax you faster than dc. i see your point on the "dc rides on top of the wire" i know what you mean. i think in sinewaves. its sad. but a car battery wont give you a nice tingly feeling. it will go in your hand and out your elbow leaving a nice char mark while it throws you a few feet away. lol. saw this dude grab 440hz one time.... he thought his carple tunnel (spelled that wrong) acted up.... so the jack *** did it again. lol. darwin was testing him.... and he failed. are you going to school for electronics right now or just know some sh*t?
Doug

 

a car bat wont kill you, but u wont like it anyways. just wear some gloves and youll be ok.

 

Wire is stranded for flexibility. It doesn't change the nature of the flow of electrons.

In fact, I believe all charged (at least those uniformly shaped) conductors carry their current on the surface. Like charges naturally repel each other and will spread across the surface evenly.

Here's a quote I found (happens to be exactly what my physics teacher told us):

"I think it's easiest to visualize for a spherical conductor.

Imagine a spherical ball with charge uniformly distributed over the surface.
By symmetry, any electric field must be in the radial direction and
have constant magnitude on any concentric sphere. By Gauss's Theorem
(a.k.a. the Divergence Theorem) the total flux through any of these
concentric spheres inside the body must be 0, and therefore the field
inside must be 0.

Now put a new electron some distance inside the body. With the charge on the
surface uniformly distributed, this electron feels no net field: the repulsion
of the surface electrons close to it would be perfectly balanced by the
repulsion of the electrons on the other side of the body. However, the
surface electrons individually do feel the effect of the new electron
inside, and they will tend to move away from it. The result is that the
electron density is slightly less at the part of the surface near the
new electron, and so the new electron is actually pushed towards the
surface.

Robert Israel israel@math.ubc.ca
Department of Mathematics http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2
"

http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/1998-12/msg0013800.html




[Modified by kotetu, 10:22 AM 1/9/2003]

 

I'm going to have to qualify here that stranded wire may behave a little oddly, as it's not a solid conductor, but a group of solid conductors. Even so, the charge should be pushed to the edge.

Wires are just stranded for flexibility.

 

you are correct. but to quote kirchoff's current law - "the sum of currents flowing into a junction equals the sum of currents flowing away from the junction" or... what is going into the body (the battery current) will come out of the body at the point of least resistance to ground. therefore... OUCH! it isnt enough to grab ahold of you. but you will be knocked away and have some injuries. depending on the point of insertion and extraction.

 

Wire is stranded for flexibility. It doesn't change the nature of the flow of electrons.
In fact, I believe all charged (at least those uniformly shaped) conductors carry their current on the surface. Like charges naturally repel each other and will spread across the surface evenly.
[/quote]

Yes, but DC and AC currents behave very different. DC flows atop a wire. AC in. Look at a switch or relay sometime. You'll see they handle more volts & amps AC than they will DC because of the size of the internal contacts. Try running an amp in your car off of a solid strand of wire. Now try with the same size strand of multipul strand wire. Works much better. Because of the limited surface area of solid strand, it creates TOO much resistance to the DC flow and becomes useless. (that or you have to make it thick enough to give it a good surface area which makes it useless anyhow). AC will flow in a wire, so for this purpose strainded or solid core doesn't make too much of a difference.

 

the current flow isnt really ontop of the wire. so the multistrand theory being better do to more surface area is bs. a sine wave ac for example makes a complete 360 degree wave 180 on the positive half then 180 on the negative half. whereas dc makes a 180 degree path on either side depending on the polarity. and continues on like that. that rate of flow for which it travels will be determined on the frequency that it is set at. visualize a sine wave on an o scope. what you are saying rjr is that it will float on top, when in all actuality in a perfect world dc would start in the center go to the top, then back to the center. and ac would continue on the downward path and return to the center. the only differance that the thickness of the single wire would make the the ammount of load that it could handle. so if i had a single strand at 8 gauge, vise a multistrand at 8 gauge. they could take the same exact load, just multistrand would be more plyable and useable for the application at hand.
kotetu is correct.

 

you are thinking of this completely wrong. DC Isn't a wave, it's a continious voltage. AC cycles. DC is carried on the outter surface of the wire, where as AC can flow in and receives less resistance. Hence the use of AC for power lines. They did have DC plants, but because of the way DC "flows" they were limited to only a mile or so of range per plant. Pretty sucky. AC can flow for alot longer distances before it's degraded to the point of no use. Just as I said before that's why DC tends to not hurt you unless it's in excess of something like 5000 volts, which is why Edison promoted his DC power plants as being safe, and AC lines as killers.

Anyhow, how did we get on this topic anyway?

(BTW> dont' forget about the different phases of AC that exist.. it's some goofy stuff)


[Modified by rjr162, 6:56 PM 1/9/2003]

 

umm, just use a stronger fuse. even if the one your putting in is the specified one, a stronger one might fix the problem.

 

Bad advice, might as well just put in solid wire.

Find the problem and fix it. Putting in a higher fuse will either pop or cause a different path for ground, no? Take the above advice, and get yourself a meter(can be had for $9.99) and start measuring voltages. The manual will most-likely give you detail on what pins to test from, and in what order. I had a problem with the main relay, boy was the helm helpful with diagnosing the problem. Best money spent on the prelude, hands down.

I see we have some EE majors in here, it's very refreshing to see. Sometimes I think in sine waves too.

Mike- who started as an EE but ended up as a CE..

 

apexii is right, if you want to do it properly use his advice, i was just giving you a temporary alternative until you can fix it so you don't get too many tickets. I had to do it with my old ls/vtec eg coupe and it held out until i could fix it properly. good luck.

 

if you put a larger fuse into the fuse holder to complete the circut the only thing you are going to do is to create more current. use ohms law for that. i gave the formulia earlier. the more furrent on the same wires = a fire hazzard and that is not at all what you want. rjr, i am going to look into the dc plants and all that jazz. sounds interesting and i dont want to be the ingnorant fool that keeps putting bad sh*t on here. lol. good conversation none the less.
Doug