Did you make a video showing the construction? That would be interesting.
Update by Tim Murray to the
Austin-Healey Sprite project car
Feb 23, 2024
|
Austin-Healey,
Sprite,
Bugeye Sprite,
Fuses
Photography by Tim Suddard
From the factory, Bugeye Sprites came with exactly two fuses: one for the horn, and one for the lighting circuit.
We were adding more electrical components to the car, and we thought it would be smart to add more electrical protection.
We planned to mount a modern ATC-style fuse block in the engine bay but when we realized that the voltage regulator was no longer going to be needed, a crazy idea occurred: Could we fit a fuse block in the voltage regulator housing and use the existing connections to retain a more period-correct look? Since we had a few spare voltage regulators, we decided it was worth a look.
First, we measured the area under the cover.
Photo 1 - The area within the yellow line is all of the "real estate" available for our fuse panel. Once the coils and hardware are removed, a flat surface is available.
We knew we could remove the coils and other hardware inside and underneath the regulator, but if we wanted the cover to fit, we knew our fuse panel would need to fit inside that footprint (Photo 1).
Once we had those dimensions, we hit the internet in search of a small-footprint fuse block. We wanted the block to have a common bus for the line (i.e., the 12V source). The Blue Sea Systems 5023 ST seemed to meet our requirements and we ordered it online. In the meantime, we stripped the voltage regulator internal parts and cleaned the remaining case with soap and water.
Once the fuse block arrived, we were able to mock it up with the regulator box. It was clear that the line bus tab would need to be shortened but the block would fit inside the regulator with the cover installed.
Photo 2 - we trimmed off the copper strips, wire, and the resistor, cleaned the terminals on the left, and soldered jumpers to the terminals. The jumpers go through holes in the bottom and attach to the fuse block.
We wanted to make the connections between the fuse block and the original voltage regulator connectors from underneath (Photo 2). We drilled five holes through the regulator bottom to align with the line bus and four load terminals on the new fuse block.
We trimmed the old regulator connections and cleaned the with a Dremel, then soldered jumpers to each terminal. The jumpers need to be sized to the load for each circuit–we used 12ga copper wire for our jumpers as we do not anticipate having a circuit greater than 20a.
We fed each jumper through the appropriate hole and then soldered on ring connectors, but we epoxied the block to the bottom before securing the terminals to the block. Once we had all the terminals secured, we tested them with an ohmmeter by measuring resistance to the line bus, then we used epoxy to pot the bottom of the regulator to further ensure our connections would remain tight.
We mounted our “new” voltage regulator fuse block in the factory location and connected our chassis harness to the regulator connections per our revised wiring diagram.
We then carefully tested each circuit individually by connecting the battery and inserting a fuse in the circuit, then testing the loads on that circuit.
Photo 3 - The finished, wired product.
We are pleased with the result (Photo 3). Our engine bay looks pretty much like it came from the factory and the added safety provided by our new fuse block makes the small effort we made to make it seem worthwhile.
Did you make a video showing the construction? That would be interesting.
What a great idea. I'm going to steal it from you for my MG ZA Magnette.
In reply to Noddaz :
We did not feel this would have wide enough interest to justify making a video
Very slick! I'm going to have to do this for my TR3 race car. So much else is dopey old looking Lucas that the ATC fuse box is a really glaring exception.
Jake
Displaying 1-4 of 4 commentsView all comments on the CMS forums
You'll need to log in to post.
