Alright, it’s not as dramatic as meltdown of a T class fuse holder but more of a track down nuisance that I want to bring to light. Some months back I ran into a Solar Assistant and and a shunt issue. They would error or momentarily fail. They had separate sources but had one thing in common, the type of fuse holder. One day I had an error in the log of the Solar Assistant and remembered that I had disturbed the wires in the vicinity at about that time. Went back did it again and sure enough there it was again. Then I moved the small fuses that protect the wires leading to the shunt and also saw the display flicker. Ok, gotcha! Despite the fuses having adequate spring pressure the contacts were not consistent after some time. I disassembled them and couldn’t see anything obvious though it was probably microscopic. These are the little 5x20mm fuse assortments that have flash nickel plated end caps on the glass tubes and the holders have brass contacts within. I pushed out the contacts from within the holder and gave them a quick buff with 3M cloth to clean them which was a bit more difficult because I outsmarted myself with the heat shrink stoppers I used that don’t allow the contacts to get completely exposed. A dab of NO-OX-ID “A SPECIAL” on the contacts and it’s doubtful that the dissimilar metals will act up again. I long ago ran out of the troublesome fuse holders but had plenty of fuses and started just soldering them in line and slipping clear semi flexible heat shrink over them. It takes up less space, easy to see if it blew, not gonna disconnect but yeah a bit more work if it does blow. FYI, I fuse both negative and positive at the start of any small wire tap. Just as easy for negative to accidentally find/pinch positive in our systems right? I thought I’d share this because so many may using these brass contacts on anything from small monitoring devices to balance leads. Heads up!
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