Avoiding FUSEBOX "China Syndrome" MELTDOWN: Pre-emptive fix

Dave is a genius!!! What a great fix for that common problem!

 

not bad, but it's still a stop gap solution. I'm not knocking Dave at all on this, far from it I myself have done the same thing to bypass the A/C, Fuel and Window motor relays.

the basic problem is still the multilayer circuit mylar used instead of a board. eventually the whole thing will leak out it's smoke, you know the stuff electricity runs on

Clive is supposed to have something soon, still no word yet and GT now has replacement units, not sure about the circuit board though.

 

Hmmm, not correct. I only do "Stop Gap Fixes" at the race track on the grid or on the side of the road, I surely do not do them on Customers cars! Most believe that the problems with these are just the board connections and the printed circuit boards which is simply not the case. Once ones sample rate exceeds a dozen failed boxes then you can start to identify ALL the problems. The multi layer set up worked fine for many years and can still be saved in most situations. It can no longer handle the circuit loads as the accessories it supplies age but I have only seen 1 situation that was not repairable with this setup.

The setup in John's car addresses all 4 identified failure points where a complete board replacement leaves numerous identified issues yet to be addressed. Many boards were dissected over many years prior to this design being finalized years back and I am quite certain it lays to rest all of the issues to date and some I suspect we would start to see in the future. This is not new, I have been doing various versions of the same fix for better than 6 years now and have had no comebacks or "smoke" yet. John's statement of 12 on the road should read 12 with a visually acceptable version. There are at least twice that number with a less than acceptable cosmetic version of the same circuitry I have built and installed with no problems. I currently am in the process of having custom parts made to improve the kit to a higher level from the visual aspect only.

Once the replacement boards proved to only address one of the known problems and at a cost that approached or exceeded 10% of the value of the car I decided it was time to look into an owner installable kit to fix all the problems. That decission was made after 13 cars in a 2 week period at my shop had at least one of the failure points causing problems. For the fist time yesterday I found the problem has moved into the new model box used in the 512TR as well, still easily addressed.

Dave

 

Dave,

I like the approach you are taking. As I recall from my former '84 Mondial QV, the bulk of the problems were coming from the fuel pump and the AC. I had ended up by-passing the fuel pump circuit and put a separate relay and fuse in to isolate that from the fuse box, and that seemed to solve a lot of problems. But your fix looks to solve all the big current draw problems, which should significantly reduce the load on the fuse box circuit board. Nicely thought out and a very neat solution.

Any chance that a similar solution might work for the windows on the 308s? I did the Birdman fuse block upgrade on my '78 GTS, which took care of those problems, but I wonder if the slow windows can be addressed by bypassing the relays. Not sure what you are actually doing there, but just a thought.

Regards,
Steve

 

Is this also applicable for the 348 model cars? If so, what is the cost of the 'DIY fix kit'???
Thanks for taking the time to address these issues Dave!

BT

 

Nope

So sorry. The boards are not the problem. Dave and I have been fixing them since 1985 and the boards are fine. The connections cause the problems. It spreads from there to the boards.

 

Heat is the enemy, and usally does begin at the high resistance of the termination connection itself....

 

All,

GTCarParts, , in AZ
Has New OEM Mondial QV fuse boxs..
And,,
I got Ur NEW metric Mondial Fuse Box Connectors right here.
(be sure to solder them on.)

PM me.

Edwardo
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here's why I call foul on the boards, the box that they reside in is not sealed from the elements, the ones out in the elements like the mondial do get moisture and water in them. the multilayer arrangement will corrode and cross connection will occur. the heat build up is from resistance in the wires and the board construction which is what is happening, the corrosion internally reduces the current flow and creates increased resistance.

 

Steve,

May very well work, I have not tried it to solve the window problem. With the hard fought effort Birdman went through to provide a very nice replacement fuse box I would be happy to discuss it with him but I would never intrude on his efforts, only assist if asked. Birdman provided a wonderful product at a very reasonable price to everyone. These types of effort in this market are commendable and should not be intruded on. Knowing what I know now of having parts made it will be years before he ever see's a profit from his effort.

After John's self install was sucessful I started having the parts I want to upgrade bid out so a more compact kit can be offered. My biggest slow down to date is I insist the new parts are produced in the US but there are a number of small companies locally that are interested in helping. Until that time when the new pieces are available to me I will assemble them as photo'd and impliment JF308's suggestions to make for an easier install process.

There are problems I have only started to see in the last year or so that have to be addressed prior to a major meltdown. In hindsight one could have predicted the latest round of failures had I know all of the facts but many have only recently come to light.

There is still a terrible need for smg2's friend to produce an affordable fusebox as there are a number of them just hanging on. I just know I have kept those cars on the road for years without replacement but I would highly suggest replacement (with an affordable piece) plus the kit installed when it is ready to assure they last for more than a few years.

Dave

 

at the risk of being in the middle [NOT PICKING sides]: the board in the T are a problem and delaminate with heat. I'll have to gather my old one somewhere, and show pics [might have tossed it, but do have two case tops], put in NOS and it's fixed.

Don't understand why the board isn't a problem for some are and for others not, but, they break down and delaminate on two I've seen. AND those clips are not reproducible.....they do melt overheat.

I agree with Brian in that there was something else there that might have back fed the board causing the problem, but once that electrical system started being an issue, a new board was needed.

 

Dave,

I was not suggesting that you compete with Birdman's fuse block upgrade. I already installed his upgraded blocks, and they are wonderful. He makes an excellent product and I highly recommend it to anyone with a 308. If anyone out there with a 308 hasn't done it, do it now and avoid a lot of electrical headaches.

My question was limited to the relays, which Birdman does not address. I changed out all my relays for new ones when I got the car a couple of years ago, and everything seems to be working fine. My windows are not terrible compared to other people's, but I know that voltage is an issue. If your bypass setup cleans that up at all, doing something with the window relays in the 308s might be helpful. Just a thought. Sounds like you are plenty busy dealing with the Mondial/512TR/etc. fix kits.

Regards,
Steve

 

The origin of the heat is the poor connections at the white plug. It causes resistance which causes heat which causes resistance which causes heat which causes resistance etc. Next thing you know stuff is melted sometimes clear back up to the relay or fuse. It all starts at the badly designed terminals at the white plugs.

I was involved with some electronics gurus with good established connections with manufacturers in China for a bolt in, plug and play unit with all the problems fixed. Per unit they would cost a couple of hunderd FOB China but start up was about $60,000 so the project was abandoned.

As far as the PC boards themselves go I have seen one bad one that was from moisture and not related to heat damage from the connectors since the Mondial came out in 1980. In high humidity climates like South America I would not be surprised if there were a higher incidence of that type of trouble.

 

Does Jack's window booster remove current draw from the fuse box?
Might consider checking this out:
http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=106031

 

Thanks for the update good to have such facts posted in this spot, too.

 

John,

This is really funny! Great post. Your quote of how the whole car runs better is really true. My old 348 converted racecar started out as a perfect pristine streetcar. As the 348 electricals got older the car got more quirky. You could never really get to the bottom of stupid little problems. So once I started to race the car and gutted out 90% of the electronics my 348 ran better than the day I bought it! In fact it ran like a different car. Still the ghost of marelli or lucus was alive and well and an eletrical fire ensued at 100mph on the race track. I swore to never have that problem again and I gutted the 348 out down to the ecu cables and even gutted unneeded wires there too. ECU cables and pushbutton starter made for 100% reliability. The only solution to my electrical problems looked like this.... I'm glad Dave has a less drastic more elegant solution.
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Dave-

I have an early 1987 TR US model. I've been able to "get by" with some patches here and there, but this looks like the solution. Once you have the kit available for my type of car, please let me know. Hopefully it will be soon. I would like to do it this winter when I do the engine out routine.

My email address is [email protected], and phone is (410) 227-5083.

 

I will look into the window issue. Both of my 308's (unfortunately?!) have windows that operate quite fast but I am sure there will be one that comes along in the shop that isnt.
The window issue on the 308's I have delt with can usually be traced to bad connectors but not in the relay panel. Simply soldering the two splice connectors just outside of the window motor will usually double the speed. I have never seen the need for a quick disconnet window motor so this is the first thing I do with them. There are so many voltage drops in line in that system.....

Agreed on Birdmans blocks. I will state I have never installed his product but that is only because I have not had the need since he came out with it. What I respect is that he had to put some effort into that project and he held the price at a civilized level while maintaining a high quality standard. FAR too many quick fixes I am dealing with now make that a high point to respect.

Dave

 

This whole project came about due to problems with a very good friends Mondial Cab that has plagued him for years. For years I had done the patch fix to Bob and Jane's car, replaced the fuse box at one point and have had him driving the car with the cover off to allow some air flow in an attempt to keep it cool. After many times in the shop over the years to trace a problem that only occurs when it is extremely hot outside I have yet to duplicate it while in the shop. At that point I pulled out the bin full of failed fuse boxes (much to the dismay of Kris and Niki I keep all of this old stuff for exactly this reason, you should have seen my header collection a while back!) and pulled the files of all my customers that experienced some type of related failures. I am glad Kris keeps all my notes in each customers file and I started the research trail. As Brian stated, we have been dealing with this type of failure since the cars were a couple years old. What surprised me was once the data was reviewed and wiring diagrams of all the suspect cars (QV, TR, 328, F-40, Mondial...) was overlayed, the obvious failures taken into account... I made a list of failures that might happen in the future if this trend continued, and then started looking very closely at cars coming in for regular service. It was quickly found that the future is here now as of the sample rate of cars was at 15 at the time, 13 showed failures in the predicted areas. These are failures I have yet to deal with when doing the patch fixes. What was interesting is looking at what Ferrari did over the years to combat these issues. Obviously they knew of the problems as I can see the changes in the wiring harness to deal with it. The changes on the TR's from the early model through the 512TRM are interesting to note yet they still left many issues not addressed. What surprised me further is a very close inspection of an incredibly nice example of a 512 TR this week showed a severe problem coming up soon.

Patch fixes worked for many years but it is past time for a proper "retro fit" fix to address this before it gets out of hand, if it isn't already. Picking Brian's brain gave insight to what he has been seeing in CA which confirmed what I suspected.

As these components (fans, fuel pumps....) age they get a little stiffer and draw more current and as stated earlier add to this the corrosion factor. The connections that were under designed from the get go have reluctantly passed this extra current until they no longer could. A drop in voltage equals a rise in current and in turn heat and so starts the China Syndrome.

One has to look beyond the obvious to see the whole picture here. One example on one model. Over the years I have replaced countless TR interior fan transistors.... one of the obvious failure points at the fuse box connectors.... Melted connector = lower voltage due to high resistance .... How many of the transistors failed due to a far higher current load being passed by them due to low voltage? I suspect the vast majority but have never looked at it this way before I started redesigning the circuit. It is at this point I pulled my father, a retired aerospace electrical engineer, off the 348 climate control panel redesign and the NLA electronic spedo circuits and had him review my proposed fix. He has helped a great deal with this and in a few weeks will be flying up to Colorado so we can sit together and critique my design and make sure there is no stone unturned. So many things can be explained we have seen over the years once one steps back and looks at all of the failure points of all the models using this type of fuse / relay box. To look at one model only gives a peek at the whole issue. The good news is it is "fixable". John was very kind to offer himself up a "Test Mule" in an attempt to make this retrofit kit owner installable. His insight helped a great deal and made this a reality. As John suspected, I do have bins of components I ordered from every supplier I could find on the Net that for one reason or another proved to be inadequate for the job.

The hard part is done, it has been road tested for plenty long now to satisfy me. A few more hours with a HIGHLY critical failure analysis engineer (yes, I am using this as an excuse to get his backside on a plane to visit) and then I will streamline the design to make it visually less intrusive. Each model has its own individual issues to deal with and space constraints that have to be addressed regarding installation issues but I think I have these all dealt with now. The parts I am having made should arrive in the next few weeks and at that point the manufacture of the kits for all of the effected models will start. I the mean time I will be making them up as I have been as the design has proven trouble free.

Dave

 

Not at this point. The 348 / 355's have not shown this type of failure yet. When I get done with the real problem cars I will start to look closely at the other models and see if there are any of the issues showing on these. With so many radio / alarm installtions, etc.... One has to look at a very large number of cars before a decission regarding their conditions can be made. I have to see a reoccuring problem on a number of cars to make sure it isnt related to a botched wiring job of an aftermarket component before I suggest that Chicken Little might have been on to something.

The DIY price is yet to be determined as it is coming down by leaps and bounds from my first hand built kits. Saddly some of my customers paid a higher price for the early kits as they were hand built from scratch and I will have to make it right with them when all is done. Once I have the manufactured parts in hand the labor time to assemble the kit drops by a third and in turn so does the price. My goal is to make it affordable enough that there will be no hesitation to install it and be done with the problems. As I said earlier, there are some that will require the fuse boxes to be replaced as they are too far gone. I am currently working out a testing procedure to determine the condition of the fuse / relay box so this question can be answered without removal from the car. Good news there is someone is already working on the remake of the box for those that need it. My hopes there is that enough thought was put into it that one box will do all the models. If not I will make a harness that will adapt it to fit.

Dave

 

Speaking of Aerospace, has anyone considered aircraft grade circuit breakers with screwdown terminal connections?

 

I am going to get my QV fusebox,,, "Rebuilt."
(Now that I got a nice Used cover.)
Keeping it "Real."

by,

GtCar Parts.
$ 750.00 frog skins,,, usa


Then I'm going to replace all the Female connectors with,

Edwardos' Metric Conn. Supply
(Ha ha)

http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=206995&highlight=fusebox


Grazzi....!

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To get a bulb lighted, you need 2 wires. All those colorfull wires in our cars are only the half way to do it. Those are the wires with the positive (+) current.
The other wire in our case is the chassis of the car. I think here is the biggist problem. There is to much resistants to overcome to get the negative (-) current back to the minus of the battery. Metal used has to much resistant, bad connection between chassistubes, corroded connections....
A simple solution : connect all the black wires to 1 bigger wire and lead it to the battery minus.

Enzo52