Melted Wires... Whee!

[avocado]

Well that was fun. It's just under freezing temps here in Pittsburgh, my block heater has apparently died, and I noticed that the stock 50A fuse was blown for my glowplugs.

I thought I could get away with just bypassing the fuse for a quick start (I'm doing some other testing and figured that would be fine until I got a new fuse later this week) only to...wait for it...melt the wires headed to the glowplugs.

Doh! That was dumb...

Part of the problem is I think I had used only 10 gauge wires...that will be changing, but I'm also finally going to try to pimp my glowplugs using a distribution system.

Regardless...happy holidays to everyone! I hope this finds you warm and having fun!

[82vdub]

#10AWG wire is good for 30A. If you replaced the factory wire with the #10 and they are all wired in series, then this was the wrong size wire (as you figured out). Running #10's from a distribution block to each glow plug would be fine, but you'd need to run larger wire to the distribution block to power all the glow plugs.

[avocado]

#10AWG wire is good for 30A. If you replaced the factory wire with the #10 and they are all wired in series, then this was the wrong size wire (as you figured out).

Thanks 82vdub. I got in there a little deeper and it looks like it was a #8AWG wire from the battery to the glow plugs. So the question is: why did the wire melt? Is it that the fuse provides just enough resistance to keep the amperage down? Or did I inadvertently upgrade my glowplugs when I ordered them from Jack?

Regardless, I'm going to wire two #8AWG wires in parallel to a ford solenoid, wire that to two distribution blocks, each through a 30A fuse (which will hopefully be enough), and then run #10AWG wires to the individual plugs. If that doesn't work, I'll look at upgrading to a 50A fuse per two plugs (but 30A is what I got now and nothing's open).

Thoughts?

[avocado]

Mystery solved: one of the glow plugs had shorted out. I fired up the glow plugs why watching the engine and one of them started to smoke.

Disconnected it and all is well....

[82vdub]

Yea, the only time the fuse should blow is when there's some short somewhere, or under a weird circumstance.

[Quantum-man]

I believe there is a memo from VAG somewhere cautioning about overtightening of Glowplugs, as the tapered seal at the ends of the threads can crimp down onto thge heater element [cover] and create a short or otherwise, and reduce plug life. There should be a little gap where the element inserts into the threaded part that closes up if over-graunched

[DanHoug]

yup. that lack of ring or gap is indicative of over-torque.

personally, i run a OO ga. cable from the battery to a Ford starter solenoid, then to a 4 fuse block with 4 separate 10ga wires. manual switch so i get as much glow as i can stand!

i've also stopped my GP burnout by switching from Duraterms to DieselRX plugs. i get along of nailing at times with Veg Oil and it seemed to take the Duraterms out within as short as 4 months. had the DieselRX plugs in for almost 2 years.

[avocado]

Thanks for the tips, volks!