Fuse for instrument panel bulbs.

This is on the low end of technical complexity, but last night my instrument panel lights quit working. The dome light and turn signal lights still worked. Tonight I looked at the exterior lighting schematic and saw that the two bulbs in the instrument panel were in-line with their own one-amp fuse on a blue-red wire. I looked in the service manual and did not see a one-amp fuse in the fuse panel behind the light switch. I looked under the dash and found a plastic in-line fuse holder on a turquoise wire with a red stripe. Figuring that it must be the one I needed, I opened it up and found a tiny fuse marked “BUSS AGA 1”.

Attachment 3114

I checked the fuse with a multimeter and saw that it was open. I went to Auto Zone ("Get in the Zone, Auto Zone") and bought an “8-fuse, low amp AGA fuse assortment” for $3.20. It included a 1 amp and 2 amp fuse. I chose the 2 amp fuse on the theory that it had been the increased load from the extra five bulbs that had been added to the circuit for the ash tray, glove box, and three gauges that had caused the original one amp fuse to over load. I put the new 2 amp fuse into the fuse holder and everything lit up. Yay!

The first thing I planned on my Ranchero is to negate the "on the headlight switch" fuses. I upgraded to the 65 Falcon switch and wired in my own fuse block (I hack them out of wrecking yard cars). This allows me to fuse far more than Ford did.

On that note: The Falcon (and other Ford cars of the '60's) wiring harness is totally un-fused from the battery to the instrument panel, so I also added an under-the-hood fuse block to instantly fuse all that wiring too. Having stripped apart over a half-dozen wiring harnesses over the years, it is no longer a surprise to see a wire in the harness has become a "light bulb" and melted itself into the surrounding wires. This should eliminate that.

Prior to adding fuse blocks under the hood, as newer cars do now (which is where I got mine from) the interim method of the 70's and 80's was to use "fusible links" to go from the BAT terminal on the solenoid to the various wires in the main harness. These acted as fuses, but looked just like wire for the most part. When these blew, you had to literally cut them out and splice in new ones.