<VV> Late model headlight switch - problem solved

[David B. Neale]

Well done, John, for fixing the problem.  Fuses can be baffling, and for the edification of the good people on VV, I'll recount a story regarding an incident a few months back ...

The heater blower on my Corvair would not work.  I made a visual inspection of the fuse-box, and levered out the blower motor fuse.  It looked perfect, and so I removed the blower motor, which I then found, on bench testing, was worked perfectly.  I then did what I should have done immediately ... test for voltage on either side of the fuse.  Voltage was present on one side, but it was dead on the other.  I levered out the fuse, and re-examined it.  The wire ran through the fuse from one cap to another ... it was visually perfect.  I then measured it with my meter ... initially, it seemed to be open-circuit, but in fact, when I tested for higher resistance, the meter showed the fuse was now a 2.5 Megohm resistor!  For those of you into early radio, it would have made an excellent grid-leak.

I learned a valuable lesson there.  It only cost me the price of a new fuse to get the blower motor running again .... plus the cost of all-new air ducts imported from Clarks to England. 

Take nothing whatever for granted!

David