I have two fuse boxes both of which have broken terminals.
Any ideas how i could go about repairing them even if it is to make one good one out of the two.
One had a snapped terminal on top but all parts are there.
The other has the top piece missing but still has the bullet section underneath.
Ideally it would be good to take a terminal off one and put it on the other but i have no idea how to go about it
best bet is probably find another one! i might even have one, at one time i had a number of NOS ones
Yep I agree, better with a new one, I have 6 NOS fuse boxes for Escort MK1 even more of the very similar looking Capri version, but electrically different.
Why do you have so many? Put a pic up it would be good to see how nice they look newOriginally Posted by caprimk1v4
it seems that the top piece is pressed on the terminal, as material is missing, you can't press it again.
A screw maybe, inside the 'tube' of the pin to hold on the terminal. just an idea....
If for some reason you can’t get a replacement box, or you just want to have a go of fixing what you have, mkdu’s screw idea may well work. Alternatively you could remove a top terminal piece from your second box by carefully removing the flange from the top of connector pin, and soldering it to the top of the pin that’s in box one. I’m fairly sure these terminals are phosphor bronze, and will take solder very well. The pin and the terminal need to be very clean, (the hole lot of terminals need some love and a good polish)
Use a small bronze wire brush (Halfords etc) and or a fibre glass pencil (great for cleaning electrical/ electronic components) Get them shiney and do the inside of the pin (fine wet and dry rolled will do that) Make sure all surfaces are really clean and grease free. Lightly hold the parts with tweezers as far from where you’re going to apply solder as pos and with the smallest contact as you don’t want your holding device to soak up the heat from the soldering iron. “Tin” both parts seperatly. (Tinning is to apply a thin coat of solder, it doesn’t need to be a blob, just a thin coat, kind of like a primer)
On the pin, tin the top and inside the tube not the outside as it may not fit back through the hole in the box.
On the terminal just the top where the pin flange used to clamp it down. Once that’s done, put it together and fix with solder.
The “tinning” is essential as to try and just solder the 2 parts together will require so much heat the plastic surround will melt. As belt and braces I’d then put a small drop of epoxy adhesive (not super glue, it’s too brittle) around the base to hold the pin/terminal secure to the plastic base, as you won’t have the compression fit the original riveting gave the terminal and you don’t want it moving which could cause issues when in use.
Apologies if I’m telling you what you already know, but just in case you’ve not done much soldering, for tinning, heat the area to be tinned not the solder, the solder should melt on to the surface, not on to the soldering iron tip then on to the surface. When you solder the 2 parts together, due to the tinning which has already bonded to the parts, place the tip of the iron on the joint and touch the solder into the irons tip and the tinned part and the solder will instantly melt and bond on to the tinned faces, so you don’t have to heat the parts up and therefore you don’t damage the plastic. You can probably find a few “how to” soldering clips on YouTube that will show what I’m trying to explain.
Good luck.
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