This reminds me of my Series V Sunbeam Alpine fuse box. Everything daisy-chained from two 50 amp Lucas fuses. None of the wiring would actually support 50 amps. Not surprisingly, every wire on one fuse fried when the horn relay failed. Today, the NEC would require 30 amps continous to use at least #10AWG and 100C insulation. Other than battery cables, none of the wiring will actually survive that kind of ampacity. I just installed a 50 amp EV charger. It took #8AWG THHN (high heat insulation). A lot of battery to starter cables are 6AWG.
Roger,
If you look more in detail to my SF-4 picture (zoom in), you can see that the lower two are the old “conical” 35 A fuses and they just fit because the clips are placed under a slight angle. The point of the conical fuse fits within the hole of the wire terminal at the lower end, but just reaches above the screw terminal at the higher side. Not really a fine solution, so I guess Lucas had already introduced the shorter fuse model in the early Fifties, but I didn’t find any confirmation so far…
Bob K.
Roger,
Have you tried Tom Kent on +44 7770 886680.
He sells original spares.
Simon
Thanks for all the suggestions - I’ve bought a lot from Tom, Simon, he is a very useful chap! I haven’t contacted him regarding fuses as they are a generic item really, and I could with several handfuls as my Cooper S uses the same size (as do pretty much every sixties car I’ve ever owned).
The fuses from Vehicle Wiring Solutions arrived today and are a perfect fit, comfortably between the screw terminals with a couple of mm each end to spare. They appear to be good quality, and I think are built for motorcycles judging by the description. The fuse rating is stamped on the end cap so easy to see.
I did the first test of the full wiring system today, which went very well - the only problem was on a couple of my added modern relays on the lighting circuits, where I had some wires astray. Touch wood, everything seems to be working…
Roger,
I was looking for something totally different, using the fantastic “library” of Tadek’s XK 120 OTS, and came across this picture of the SF-4 fuse box in Tadek’s car.
You will see that there were four 1 1/4" “conical” fuses in there. Just to show that it’s feasible to use them in that box. I don’t know whether these were the original fuses (which would mean that Tadek’s car never had a blown fuse in its life…).
Bob K.
Interesting, Bob. The pointed type are not a shape I’m familiar with.
The 25mm fuses arrived from Vehicle Wiring Products, and they fit perfectly. I have a bag of them in the toolkit now, just in case.