In a message dated 97-07-25 11:12:29 EDT, tboicey@brit.ca (Trevor Boicey)
writes:
> Careful, you are making a jump in logic.
>
> The FACT is that the operations you performed while cleaning
> corrosion from connectors removed the source of the blowing
> fuses.
>
> That doesn't mean what you actually BELEIVED you were doing
> actually solved the problem. You might have relocated a wire
> that was shorting, or bent a wire in a new way that caused
> it to conduct or not conduct.
>
> LUCAS is tricky, take nothing for granted.
This reminds me of the experiment scientists performed with the grasshopper.
They trained it to hop when they clapped their hands. After pulling off all
its legs, the grasshopper no longer jumped when they clapped hands.
Conclusion? When you pull off a grasshoppers legs, he can no longer hear!
I also have a degree in Electrical Engineering, with 28 years experience
designing instrumentation and control systems for Nuclear Power Plants.
Trevor is absolutley correct - increased resistance will NOT cause fuses to
blow.
Just as an example of how confusing electrical circuits can be, a couple of
weeks ago, I was performing continuity checks on the wiring I had just
installed in my TR5.0. I was checking for continuity from the input to fuse
A, through the various loads, switches, etc, fed from this fuse. I accidently
touched the input to fuse B, and found continuity from fuse A. Having
experience with this sort of thing, instead of panic, I looked through the
schematic to see why this could be.
Turns out, I was getting a path through fuse A, through a switch in circuit
A, through the indicating lamp for that switch, through ground, through the
parking lamps, through the headlight switch, and back to the input to fuse B.
The resistance through all these lamps was so much less than the resistance
of the bulb in my continuity tester, that they all looked like a short
circuit to it.
The whole point of this is, unless you understand thoroughly the principles
of electricity, it is very easy to be misled by the results of tests or
experiments.
Dan Masters,
Alcoa, TN
'71 TR6---------3000mile/year driver, fully restored
'71 TR6---------undergoing full restoration and Ford 5.0 V8 insertion - see:
http://www.sky.net/~boballen/mg/Masters/
'74 MGBGT---3000mile/year driver, original condition
'68 MGBGT---organ donor for the '74
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