Quite a while back I bought an Engman fuse panel. It's lovely and I'm happy that I bought it. I finally installed it today and, after a little smoke, made an unpleasant discovery.

It turns out that the metal bracket on the back of the fuse panel touches right up to a positive wire connector that has live voltage.

Hence the smoke.

My question is why is this battery connector sitting right here so close to the panel? With the new fuse panel bolted up it makes direct contact between the rear metal bracket and the live connector making a really solid short circuit. Has anyone else noticed this? I have no idea if my connector is even in the stock location. There doesn't seem to be another convenient spot to relocate it to.

Thanks,
Marcus
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You have an early car. You could remove the connection from the bracket. Bolt and shrink tube the electrical connection. Then tie it to the harness.

Entirely true. Mostly. The car is a 1971. The engine and rear half of all the wiring is from 1973. If it just needs to connect, then I'll find a fancy connector and move it out of the way.

Thanks.

Later cars ~'72ish had two wires from the battery directly to the fuse panel and ignition switch. Yours has one big wire split under the dash. I assume Porsche changed it due to arcing under the dash.

On my 74, that is where the ground wires bolt to.

I had my share last year on my 70, check this thread . http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...=115319&hl=

In my case, the bolt touched that the block where the main red wire from the battery is attached. My red wire and other wires were melted. I had to pull the harness from the tunel, inspect, tape and replace as necessary.

you may want to do the same.

I added a fuse on the engine bay on that red wire for prevention.

Good luck!

This is the reason I put together a fuse block kit for fusing the red wires from the battery. I have a test in the works to make sure the 4 way fuse block will handle the necessary current thru a single fuse connection for the early cars with only three red wires at the battery positive. I will post results when I have the test up and finished.
Tom

I just had the same problem as OP - but manageable

A word of experienced advise for those who do their own electrical work. It is standard practice to disconnect the battery while doing electrical work. When you are finished, hook up the battery SLOWLY. If there is a large spark, don't keep it connected, find out why the spark, then re hook up the battery. Better yet, devise a fuse block assembly to fuse those large red wires going to the dash and relay panel.
Tom

I'm surprised no one stomped on the "disconnect the battery" advice sooner. In self defense, I always disconnect the battery. When my meltdown happened it went really fast and the damage was minimal, so I knew enough about that. I couldn't imaging doing a job like this without disconnecting the battery. I think the real issue is just that the positive wiring connector is completely unseen when changing the fuse panel. It wasn't until I removed everything and really stuck my face under the dash and moved a fistful of wires before I realized that there WAS a central hot connector located right next to the corner of the fuse panel. Obvious in retrospect, but not at all obvious at the time of installation. Hence my post.

I actually installed the fuise box months ago without a battery in the car. today I was hooking up a parking light when things went bad. still I should have disconnected battery.

question is how best to butt these 4 wires together? the fattest one must be 8 awg or fatter?

I will post a picture of my distribution box that can be purchased at a radio / alarm installation place

I used something like this and a fuse between the block and the battery. I believe the fuse is 50 Amps.

I'm a fan of these Bussman fused / switched power distribution blocks. You can get them from various sources; Waytek for one:

http://www.waytekwire.com/item/46095/POWER...Y-MODULE-STUDS/

The long J-case fuses are available up to 60A. If you'd rather not pick out the individual components, you can get a kit from this guy with boots and the relay connector pieces:

http://www.concept-customs.com/Electrical/Electrical%202.htm

Or if you just want a fuse block:

http://www.waytekwire.com/item/46089/FUSE-HOLDER-FOR-MINI/

If you're feeling super-cheap, BMWs from at least the E30 onwards have a 250A maxi fuse in a box hung off the B+ terminal on the battery, or in some cases near the jumper cable connection under the hood. You can get these cheap from your local wrecker. Blowing a 250 maxi fuse takes some doing; you are typically going to be better served with a few separate circuits and smaller fuses.

Don't use anything from the "car audio stylez" department. If it's polished, translucent, gold plated or has LEDs on it, stay away; a) it's crap, and b) it's not designed for life in a harsh environment.

= Mike

If you're just doing this once off, and this is inside the cabin, there are so many options it will make your head spin.

The simplest and cheapest is to pull the four together in the same direction, find some thin copper wire (solid core telephone wire would do the trick), bind the four butts together by wrapping 4-5 turns of the solid wire around them and solder it into a blob. Wrap with electrical tape (not recommended) or adhesive-filled heatshrink (better). Use a ziptie 1" or so away from the bare wire to keep it all together while soldering, or you'll burn your fingers before it takes properly.

There are any number of screw or cage terminal distribution blocks that you can use. The Wago 26x family (plus insulated jumpers) work well, but you don't want to be ordering a tiny number of them. I got my last batch from a junk bin at Halted.

You could go completely overboard with something like this MetriPack 280-based system:

http://www.waytekwire.com/products/21/Splice-Pack-System/

TBH, I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with the stud terminal in the earlier pictures in the thread, other than it's in a bad place. Move it somewhere else, or get a replacement like:

http://www.waytekwire.com/item/47213/JUNCT...CK-87-STUD-RED/

Crimp some O-ring terminals onto your wires and feed them through a boot so that the bolt is covered and you're in business...

= Mike

Well, my intent wasn't to stomp. Merely to give the community a very valid reason for disconnecting the battery. If everything is off when reconnecting the battery, and you get a spark upon initial contact of the battery connector to the post, stop and check your work because something is not right. On our cars there is very little to no current flow with everything off, exceptions being the clock or newer radios/stereos and there should be very to no spark when hooking up the battery. If there is a bigger spark and you have been doing electrical work, something you were doing is causing a problem and you can contain the damage by following this simple step.
Tom

This thread was brought to my atttention suggesting that I should be concerned about this.

However, the issues above did not occur with a JWest fuse panel. Our fuse panal does not use a metal strap above for this very reason.

We use a nylon spacer to mount the fuse box so even if the screw near the power block touches solid, it is isolated and will not cause a short.

The first step in our instructions that involve touching the car is to disconnect the battery cable, which should be done before any electrical work.

I have been looking for something like this. Where did you get yours?

With due respect to the 'inventors' of these aftermarket fusepanels, I am not convinced these are worth the trouble over the factory stock fusepanel. I think they are solutions to a non-problem and in fact create other problems just to make them work, and the experiences in this thread prove that. They are just adaptations of inexpensive generic fuse boxes interposed into the factory wiring for minimal if any benefit. Why anyone would give up the quality built factory fusepanel is a mystery to me. Just because these are new, does not mean they are better. Some seem to be better than others, in fairness. I would really like to see a 'shoot-out' comparison to better understand their characteristics compared to each other and with the stock fusepanel by a neutral person that can give us the facts.

My concerns are:

1. Sure they use new improved fuses - so what, the original bullet fuses work fine.

2. Some complain that they knock the fuse cover and fuses off getting in/out of the car. That has never happened to me in 35 years of driving these cars. Just be cautious or zip tie the cover on if this is problem for you.

3. The shorts to ground and melted wires for the early cars described above are serious hazards - why should the factory terminal block need to be relocated, wrapped, taped to the harness or left to hang free just to accommodate the new fusepanel? Its stupid to have to do this and should not need to be done - it screams to me that these fusepanels create more problems than they solve.

4. The wires from the harness do not connect onto the fusepanel well because they attach through the sides of the fusepanels, putting strain at the wire-to-wire terminal junction. So as a result, the harness wrapping needs to be cut and loosened up to minimize this strain. Another thing that is contrived.

5. The factory fusepanel has busses for some of the circuits that the aftermarket fusepanels do not have becasue they are generic adaptions. How are these circuits handled with the aftermarket fusepanels and has the engineering been done to assure that these affected circuits are not under/overloaded? Are adapter tabs used? If so..another contrivance.

There may be more, but thats it for now.

You do make some good points. I still believe the new panels are a good improvement. The connections on the fuses are stronger. Loose fuse connections corrode and can get hot. I really like the new fuses especially the illuminated ones that indicate a blown fuse.

The buss bar connections you referred to could be a concern. My panel was from Engman. He used "Solder Wick" to connect the hot sides of some circuits as is needed. He simply had this pressed into position. It was held in place by a plastic part in the back of the panel. This was not good so I soldered mine in place.

In defense of your position, I would add that disturbing the wires and connections can cause problems. Wires get old and brittle. Connectors get corroded and loose their gripping tension. When changing the panel, you risk causing problems because of this. In my view, that's life. If the wires look too corroded and brittle, replace or repair them. They are trouble looking to happen anyway.

Pm sent

People have different experiences and trouble areas, no need to upgrade if you have never had issues due to your use and environment. The experience in the thread showed a different design than mine had a big design flaw when fitted to early cars.


1. In a variable weather environment such as the east coast where I grew up, the bullet fuses would corrode at the ends and have to be spun to establish a good connection every once in a while. Had the issue with VWs and Porsches when the cars were only a few years old and even still had factory installed (quality) fuses. In the desert it will probably never be an issue.

2. I used to have it happen when I was a lanky flexible 17 year old, getting older and stiffer has not helped. Probably very dependant on your height, leg length, seat position, shoe size, etc. "Just be cautious" kinda goes out the window when you are trying to keep pouring rain out of your car on a dark night in a hotel parking lot of a car event you are attending.

3. That has never been an issue with my properly engineered mounting.

4. There is plenty of room to do this right, just takes a little care. I argue that in the factory design the wire tension works to pull open the terminals and make them loose (which I have seen many times), while the side orientation does not do this.

5. Ganged fuses are internally bussed on my panel to dupicate the factory scheme. I created test setups to stress the units well beyond the design load for extended periods under non-ideal conditions to prove the design before it was used.

The JWest panel has internal soldered connections for the buss bars.

I was not aware of how the Engman panel was assembled. Since there is no longer support for Engman products, I will make a couple suggestions. I would recommend anyone with an Engman panel to remove the back covers and the buss wires soldered if the above is the case for all he produced. I would also recommend changing the metal strip mounting to a different configuration or maybe coating it with plasti-dip. That strap always looked to me like a place for a wire to rub and short.

The exact same thing happened in my 70. Melted a few wires in the process and a slight meltdown of the plastic on the aluminum bracket.
I simply moved the battery cable as described above and repaired wires. No problems since.
Scary as hell moment!

I wonder what the ampacity of solder wick is? What other materials were used for the busses and would these have the same quality as the factory fuse panel? Photos would be nice...

Since I've been dragged into this - the JWest fuse panel uses overkill 12 gauge stranded copper wire wrapped and then soldered in place for the internal busses.

Couldn't agree more.


Actually that's true here too, and always has been. My first VW was a 1960 with those same bullet fuses, same problem. Not just my car either, I was a VW mechanic in dry central California where it's always been an issue. When there are electrical issues the first thing any mechanic will do will be spin the fuses. They get worse over time. I suspect there's some heat that develops in the connection that over the years eventually lessens the temper of the metal so it loses tensile and the fight against simple gravity pulling those fuses out. Who hasn't bent the copper in to give them back some tension? You shouldn't need to do that to keep something working.


It definitely isn't age, I knocked them loose then and still knock the damned things loose today. And for some reason always in the dark. It's gone on long enough now that I recognize that as the pattern.

There's also the advantage of the new fuses with the LED's that let you know they're blown. I'm older now and HATE doing anything under the dash, so appreciate the at-a-glance indication those fuses give.

For perspective I've never gone and will never go to a concours show so originality has no particular value to me. I want things that work. Those original fuses are a REALLY old design, and electronics has progressed a lot since then.

I installed a JWEST panel in my 1970 sixer 2 yrs ago - it is a tight fit vertically, but a vast improvement

i love it

.

yup - it's not oem - and it probably reduces the value of my car - by maybe .02 ? -

I just installed one of your panels - thanks for taking the time to work on this, it's appreciated and I'm very happy to have modern fuses in the car.

However, with your panel the outboard mounting screw for the fuse block interferes with the bolt in the junction being discussed here, with the consequence that it's not possible to cleanly install the panel due to this interference.

The screws into each end of the nylon spacer are also sufficiently long that I couldn't be confident they weren't going to make contact, though I didn't attempt to measure this due to the interference effect above forcing a relocation of the terminal.

I was also surprised that you don't have an isolator between the mounting panel and the terminals on the fuse block. Even mild pressure on the midsection of the panel (such as accidentally slipping whilst trying to insert a fuse lying upside down under the dash) will short multiple terminals on the input side to ground. It may be that later wiring looms have sheathed connectors, but again on my car these are all uninsulated.

None of these were insurmountable obstacles, but I figured possibly worth mentioning...

We put a engman fuse panel in and YES, when we put the battery jumper to test it
a large gray ghost came flying out of the dash, scared the hell out of us but it was
the heat shrink tubing that melted that we put over the bracket. Like J Kelly did, we simply moved the red fuse link to the outside as well as relocated the ground
wires too. We also noticed the jumpers were also incorrect as we opened the case as re-located the jumpers to get the headlamps working properly. I like it
though over the stock unit.