Club 80-90 Forums

My battery box is beginning to look like a dogs dinner of inline fuses.

I've seen a nice modular fuse & relay holder system. As well as various blade fuses, it will house Standard, Maxi or Micro relays.

Anyone know of any voltage sensing relays that will fit any of those sockets?

Here's the housing that caught my eye... somewhat tidier than my current mess.

You'll need to take out a small mortgage for that particular fusebox as its modular and every single part has to be bought separately. I gave up totting up the parts

http://polevolt.co.uk/acatalog/Modular_ ... ystem.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

For that kind of money I'd want it on display and sprayed gold.

CovKid wrote:You'll need to take out a small mortgage for that particular fusebox as its modular and every single part has to be bought separately. I gave up totting up the parts

http://polevolt.co.uk/acatalog/Modular_ ... ystem.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

For that kind of money I'd want it on display and sprayed gold.

I wouldn't expect you to like it. You've got a poundshop seed tray glued to your dash.

Anyone with any *helpful* answers, please do post.

Aye, though to be honest I do like it. I have seen similar ones on modern cars so I think I'd be visiting my nearest scrappy and seeing whats going. After all, modern stuff generally has more accommodating fuse boxes to take all the accessories we run with today. Definately wouldn't part with the money needed for one of those but I'll wager you could get a close match for about a tenner - in keeping with my stuck-on seed tray and Heath Robinson gadgets :



Difficult to find a really good place for a revised fusebox due to so much stuff under the dash already. In an ideal world, the fusebox would be better placed under a seat where you could get at it but I did think a lift-up hatch on dash would make life SO much easier....

Not sure if its any help, but the ones in big trucks like the Scania etc are great - loads of fuses and relay sockets. You might like to visit a commercial vehicle scrappy and see if they can help you out. The existing T25 fusebox is somewhat limited. I'm with you there.

Your approach isn't entirely unfamiliar to me. You are, basically, my dad. He had a never ending succession of bangers maintained on the cheap, although tbf he probably wasn't as canny as your good self.

I remember one afternoon that went like this:

- Dad and brother go to scrapyard for a replacement fuel tank.
- Bring tank home and remove vapours using a match.
- There is a very very *very* loud bang.
- Dad and brother go to scrapyard for a replacement fuel tank.



That said I'm planning to go to the scrappy myself at some point, just for a general nose. Commercial vehicle scrappy, now that's a good idea.

And yep, the position of the standard fuse box is pain in the ar$e when it comes to adding new kit that's going to be installed in the back. The simple thing is go straight off the battery, and all of a sudden you've got a fistful of inline fuses. Nothing wrong with them as such, they work, I just hate the DIY look I've ended up with.

Lol Ghost

Seriously though, I guess you could strip down the existing one so it has the basic stuff run through it then fit another for accessories elsewhere. I recently fitted one for Ronsrecord (he picked it up). It was rather neat as although it had plenty of fuse slots you could split each side so one lot would do main battery stuff and the other, leisure stuff or connect both sides and run lots of accessories from one source. It was fairly compact too. Would need a different board for relays but that didn't seem too great a handicap.

Howe about these? They join together so you could use a plastics glue to make them permanent:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Relay-3-Fuse- ... 2a14e3fbb8" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

£30 would be enough for five relays (will accept four or five terminal types) and 15 fuses. Looks compact too. Might get those myself as you could expand fusebox according to need. Nice neat replacement for existing fusebox, particularly if you have the crappy ceramic ones and a lot cheaper than one you first looked at. It should be just a case of tackling each fuse and connectors as you go. You can use splt tag blade connectors if need be but would give you an opportunity to get everything on its own fuse to be honest. £40 spent would give you a lot of headroom and it would fit neatly under dash.

Split charge relay could be fitted to a single or twin one under seat or expand again to cover leisure accessories. Even my frugal approach to solving problems would stretch to that. If its only the voltage sensing relay that's left over, I'm sure a suitable socket could be found. All the ones I've seen are self-contained anyway and you just screw them down. No big deal.

If I get around to it over the Summer, I'll happily WIKI it.

6th April - P.S. It seems that later fuseboxes (1990 onwards) in the VW range, in common with other car manufacturers, moved over to plugs and sockets to fuseboard and in some cases, totally sealed units so you can't get at the wires to and from (new shape Beetle a prime example). God forbid if there is ever a fire or break in one of THOSE looms - you'd need to strip out the lot.

I gleaned all this after I took a trip to a guy who runs the biggest late-VW scrappy in Coventry (Sanburn Autos) who was patient enough to show me how much they changed after the T25 and why later boxes are very difficult if not impossible to graft into a T25. There were literally hundreds of them in his store and he went through the descendants of our fuse boards from early T25 ceramic fuse types - all the way through to Golf Mark 5's.

He pointed out the enormous problems involved and why the whole idea was basically a dead loss. Very grateful to him for his experience and willingness to help. On that note I retract my suggestion of looking at fuseboxes in scrap yards - clearly I was way off the mark. Hopefully my excursion will have helped a little and save anyone else wasting their time looking at later VW fuse arrays.

It would seem that the ebay link I gave is the best solution - both in terms of usability and value for money.