Ford fuse follies [long]

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I tow a trailer with my Ford Transit van. On a recent stop in eastern Tennessee I noticed that the trailer tail lights had gone dark. Investigation showed that this was due to a short in the trailer that had apparently blown the van fuse dedicated to this circuit. The short was quickly fixed, so the rest of the job was simply replacing the fuse – easy, right?

Well, not exactly. The owner’s manual indicates the fuse in question sits in a panel behind a cover, just forward of the driver’s right knee; access is awkward, but not desperate. The panel contains a bunch of fuses, a number of which are standard blade types (for which I carry spares). But this is a curious kind of fuse, seated in a rectangular depression about 10 x 12 mm. There’s no obvious way to grab it and pull it out. Off to an auto parts store to buy a replacement and the tool that can extract it.

The first two such stores had nothing: no fuses resembling what I’d seen, and no one who knew anything about this. The third (O’Reillys) was much better: They had “JCase” fuses that looked right, and a helpful guy who said they had no puller tool, but quickly found a video showing how to make one. Being 700 miles from home this wasn’t an option, but the video suggested the fuse could be coaxed out of its hole with a knife.

This I was able to do (about 5 minutes of awkward work with a flashlight and Swiss Army knife). The fuse was indeed blown, and its size & shape closely matched the ones for sale. True, the old one had small ribs that the new one lacked – but that should not prevent the “ribless” version from fitting – right?

Wrong. The new fuse exactly fit the slot, but would slide in only about 75% of the way, making no electrical contact. Somehow those ribs push something out of the way, allowing only the ribbed version to fully seat. Off to the local Ford dealer – mercifully, only about 12 miles away (though closed until the next morning).

The Ford parts guy knew his job. He looked at the fuse and said “Yes, JCase - we have them in stock. But wait – that’s the type with ribs. Let’s see – looks like we have those as well.” But a 5-minute search turned up nothing. “We keep them in stock. [Well, apparently not always] I’ll order a dozen from Memphis [320 mi] – should be here Friday. They’re cheap – only about $7 apiece.” I forbore to mention that simple blade fuses (of which the same fuse panel includes more than a dozen) can be found anywhere, for around 25 cents each.

A Friday phone call determined that the truck from Memphis had not arrived, but was confidently expected Monday, late morning. A Monday call indicated that the truck had still not arrived, but secured the promise of a phone call when it did. No such call was received. But a Tuesday call extracted the news that fuses had arrived!

They had indeed, and after another 24-mile drive, fuse is replaced and trailer lights work.

I’m left wondering: what thought process led Ford engineers to specify an unusual type of fuse that takes a week to buy? $7 is a lot for a fuse, but not nearly enough to make “cash grab” the answer.

Your thoughts?

2

A rarely-expressed but deep-seated hatred for their customers?

3

Leaving a baloney sandwich with mayo behind the door card gets old after a few times. They need fresh material.

The only other useful reference I found w/a Google search was somebody else’s story, similar to yours.

I’d never even heard of ribbed Jcase fuses before.

Uncool.

4

First I’ve heard of this. Interesting discussion here. It apparently has some reliability advantages because the socket/spring contacts are part of the fuse, and not part of the fuse box.

5

I installed a hardwire kit for my cam a few weeks ago and a giant benefit of the system is the fuse tap set. You pop out a suitable fuse, push it into the equivalent tap and insert back into the block.

The @%#&$ing thing doesn’t latch . Whatever holds in the fuse doesn’t engage the tap and lightest bit of wiggle makes it fall out. I wedged them in place with a foam block pushed in with the fuse panel cover and they’re holding for now, lol.

Finding suitable fuses: check.
Routing cable through the dash, up the pillar past the airbag, under the headliner, no sweat.
Installing the idiotproof fuse taps: FAIL

6

Everything I’ve seen says it’s a Ford-unique thing. Like, their own patent and everything. To cut out an aftermarket.

I suppose there’s a claim of technical superiority, like protecting the socket contacts with a cover that moves aside when you insert the proper fuse… but you know and I know that’s not why it’s a propietary design only available in their parts departments.

7

I hate it when auto parts with a finite lifespan require, by design, proprietary OEM replacements (I actually despise this practice with pretty much all proprietary things, but I’ll limit my rant to auto parts).

I drive a 2023 Kia Soul. The rear windshield wiper blade is an OEM-only part. The blade looks like your bog-standard rear wiper blade but in actuality is narrower than the replacements that are available at any auto parts store. So after wasting my money on several different blades that claimed they fit but most certainly did not, I finally caved and went to my Kia dealer. I bought IIRC 7 replacement blades – at like $18 each – and the new ones work a treat. But I’m pissed that I have to drive 70 miles to the dealer to get something that by all rights should be available at the parts house 3 miles down the road from me for 1/3 the price.

Letting @Czarcasm know because he’ll be running into this issue before too long.

8

Thank you for letting me know.

9

Now, you’ve got me wondering what kind of shelf life – from manufacture – those things might have …

Hm.

10

I replace my windshield wipers about every 4 months, so the 7 I bought will give me ~two years’ supply with an extra thrown in for good measure. I’m wagering on the rubber still being good in 2 years (I keep them on a dark shelf in my garage so hopefully environmental degradation is minimal). The long drive to the dealer certainly factored into my decision to stock up.

11

The year of your Ford Transit van matters, people asking for help always leave out that important info.

Part stores now employ mostly minimum wage idiots who can do little beyond ordering the wrong part. Long gone is the knowledgable person behind the counter.

Sites like Rockauto will offer you several types of the part you are looking for, pick the one you want to pay for, see a picture of what it looks like to be sure, and order the thing.

It will likely be at your door in a couple of days. The parts store will tell you they can have the part in 2 days. And they are doing the same thing you can do, only their part will cost you double the price you would pay if you just ordered it yourself.

Autozone may have it in stock, O’Rielly’s may have it in stock, take your chances. If they don’t have it they will just order it within their own system and it will take just as long to get.

12

Agreed with the caveat that if you find a local auto parts store that’s been around for decades with more-or-less the same staff you might have better luck. My adventures with the above-noted wiper blades ended that way: after buying two different wiper blades online that didn’t fit followed by one at Autozone that didn’t fit, I went to a local place staffed by grizzled old guys in MAGA shirts who were actively smoking behind the counter and asked them WTF was going on. They puttered around in their databases and then finally told me it was a dealer-only OEM part. These guys have decades – hell, probably centuries – of experience between them and know their stuff. The wage slave at Autozone, as you note, only knows what the computer is telling them.

13

No worries… just store them in a nitrogen-filled container. :laughing:

14

I typically get 2-3 years out of a set here in SoFl. We get ~65" of rain per year, plus lots of rubber destroying sun.

I see your location. How the hell do you eat wiper blades at that rate? How many miles do you drive in a year?

15

The same thought process that led them to put the filler hole on the engine coolant reservoir on the far end on the tank, way up under the hood cowl, where one can’t get a bottle of anti-freeze anywhere near it. Rather than, yanno, put it at the other end of the reservoir.

16

I drive about 25-30K miles per year. I also park outside (not under cover) which may have something to do with it.

Our 50" of yearly rain is pretty much one long drizzle from November through June. We don’t get one torrential downpour and then sunshine for the rest of the day. (I don’t know if S. Florida is like that, my buddy in Hawaii experiences that routinely.) Come Halloween or so it starts raining and basically doesn’t stop until sometime around Father’s Day. It’s a genuinely rare day between late fall and the beginning of summer that I don’t use my wipers at least some point on my commute.

I generally use RainX wipers on all my cars.

17

We get 8 months of this and 4 months of drought.

You drive 3-4x what I do. To boot, your perpetual drizzle puts lots of strokes on your blades despite little accumulated rainfall depth.

Your blade consumption makes a lot more sense in that context. Especially if you’re somebody who changes them the instant they start streaking / gapping instead of tolerating them until the start of dry season.

Thsnks for the elaboration.

18

I’m surprised the car did not come with a fuse puller clipped into the fuse block cover. Perhaps in the main fuse block under the hood?

19

Thanks for this link. It pointed me to an online source for these (apparently Ford-specific) fuses - priced at about half of what the dealers charge. I’ll be ordering some spares.

20

Three times a year is a LOT but I understand. I do mine annually in the fall and scrub the glass with the squeegee most fill ups. I do not use my hatchback’s rear wiper, ever. They always suck and leave dumb semicircles for life.

I’ve also standardized in RainX Latitude(?) Wipers. They sometimes drop a couple bucks at Walmart (ROLLBACK) to about $14-16 each.