Ken and list,
First of all, a public apology to Ken Nachman. I should have known the subject
line in his post was meant in jest, and not as a putdown for the group, and I
shouldn't have been offended. Normally, I'm pretty easy going, but I guess I
got out of bed on the wrong side that day. Peace, Ken!
Secondly, I stated in my reply to Ken that the TR6 fuse block has no bridge,
and that if his did, he had the wrong fuse block. That was, and is, correct,
but I have learned a little more since then. It turns out that an MGB fuse
block does have a bridge between the first and second fuse positions.
Installing this block with the number one fuse on the down side would indeed
cause the symptoms Ken was experiencing. BTW, if you look closely, the fuses
are numbered, and the number one fuse should go up on a TR6.
What makes all this the more troubling is the fact that an MGB fuse block
looks identical to the TR6 block, even to the point of having the same number
- FSJ - embossed on the cover. If you buy a fuse block from a second hand
source, as Ken stated that he did, beware of this. The fuse block itself - not
the cover - has the model number stamped on one of the mounting ears, the ear
closest to the number one fuse. If you have a used fuse block, and you are not
sure, just turn it over and look - the bridge is very obvious if you are
looking for it (if you are not looking for it, you probably would never notice
it). I can imagine that there are a lot of second hand vendors that are not
aware of this, and will happily sell you an MGB fuse block for use in a TR6.
What if you do have an MGB block, and mount it "right-side-up" as Ken did to
correct his problem - Is this a problem? It depends. If you connect nothing to
the top fuse, but keep it stock, there will be no problem. If you decide to
connect anything to that fuse, you will find that whatever you have connected
will be on whenever the ignition switch is on. This may or may not be
desirable, depending on what you want to connect. It might even be worth
replacing the TR6 block with an MG block just to get that feature! However,
the top fuse will not be a "spare," as we normally think about it, rather a
second 'ignition" fuse. As an example, if you wanted to add a cooling fan, and
wanted to wire it so it would have power to the thermostat at all times so
that the fan would cool even with the engine off, you would connect a brown
wire to one side of the fuse, and the fan circuit to the other side. If you
did that, the igntion circuit would now be on all the time, and you would not
be able to shut off the engine.
Since several people expressed a concern over this, I thought I would post
this information to the group as a whole.
Dan, (humbly apologetic) Masters,
Alcoa, TN
'71 TR6---------3000mile/year driver, fully restored
'71 TR6---------undergoing full restoration and Ford 5.0 V8 insertion - see:
http://www.sky.net/~boballen/mg/Masters/
'74 MGBGT---3000mile/year driver, original condition
'68 MGBGT---organ donor for the '74
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