Hi All, Driving back from Preston last night, i could smell burning, a couple of seconds later everything cut out. On inspection of the fuse panel, the 16A red fuse had totally melted. I replaced this fuse 2 more times which were getting closer together. One the 3rd fuse i called in the RAC who took me home. This fuse controls everything, i did not even have hazards!! The cops came out to warn other traffic until the breakdown truck arrived. Has anyone got any idea what could be causing this to happen. Many thanks, Dean
Sorry to state the obvious but you have a short circuit somewhere. either a wire has been pinched or damaged & is rubbing on something or you have a component that's packed in. Do a visual inspection around the starter motor, alternator, anywhere there are a lot of cables. Might be an idea to pull out your instrument cluster & look behind, also check the fuse box for melted wires, connections or even if the fuse box is loose.
Don't forget to re-post back what you find. Check here for an appropriate wiring diagram for your bus then you can see what the offending fuse feeds:- http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/wiringt2.php
On a similar vein, last sunday we broke camp and started up the engine (2 litre type 4), running sweet then it stalled, a not insignificant puff of smoke through the heater. She drove really rough all the way home, missing etc. Finally got a good luck in the engine bay on Monday, the wire that goes from the coil to the choke and heaters etc on the LH carb had burned out and taken the vaccum advance tube in the process. All repaired now but I reckon a full engine bay rewire is needed with sleeved wire etc.. Scary thought!
If your blowing fuses you have an issue that needs looking at and not just replacing fuses, I appreciate you were trying to get home. I would hazard a guess that when your switch live burnt out it may have melted some wire sheaf somewhere causing a short at a later date. You need to check which fuse is blowing and what it feeds/where it goes to and from and trace those cables checking for damage.
yep deffo - if you've blow a fuse in whatever situation...... there is a reason ! Don't just blindly replace fuses with higher ampage ones ! (Im sure some of you have done it!) The fuse just stops your bus bursting out in flames from an electrical fault, so fix the problem. Not sure why mr VW didn't put a fuse on the electric choke... but doesn't hurt to have one on there if your doing a bit of re-wiring. Maybe he thought you wouldn't let your choke unit get so yukky that it fused in the first place.... ! Remember melting electrics, and petrol leaks are the 2 common causes of fire, so if you add some wiring, Leisure batteries, solar panels, internal lights etc etc "Make sure it's Fused!!"
The manual that's available via the links in mech tech has all wiring diagrams, might help if you can zoom and print to help trace the offending wiring
Good call on the choke wires. I'll do that when the engine bay gets jizzed up over winter. With regards to the fuse blowing, as mentioned you need to find what fuse it is. And then work out what it works.
Managed to find out what the original electrical problem was; all my electrics were wired through 1 16 amp fuse!!! Mr Auto Electrician managed to sort it out! Since this was sorted I decided to go through and find out exactly what each fuse feeds, i managed to find something for each fuse and discovered that none of them feed my radio!! ??? Does anyone have a definitive list of which fuse is supposed to feed what? I realise that not all vans will be the same, but it will give me a rough idea and where my radio should be coming from! Many thanks (this site is great, you can find out about just about anything to do with campers, and most other things too!!) Dean P.S. how can i change my user name? and why is orange jam called marmalade?
Re reading my post sounds a bit harsh. I didn't mean it to be sorry. Your hanes manual will tell you which fuse supplies what. Normally number 12 does your radio I think.
