Thread: Too much of a good thing

I needed a new 12V air compressor, the last one was a (ten year old) $20 cheapy that finally ran out of puff blowing up balloons.
So I'll buy a bigger/better/more expensive one.
This one in fact


The good news?
well it would inflate an anvil if you asked it to,,
the bad news?
the power cable(note the use of that word) has an inline wedge fuse holder,, out of the box it has a 50A fuse,, laugh? I had tears running down my face,, you silly chinese people. So I pulled the 50 and replaced with a nice conservative 10. The sound of the on switch clicking and the fuse blowing were simultaneous, 15A? the same. 20A? well it didnt blow straight away,, but then it wasnt connected to anything to blow up yet! The suby spare was its first victim. The pressure guage showed 25psi(not bad for 5 years), clicked the on switch and blam. A 25A fuse actually let it run for ten seconds, more than enough time to add ten psi to the spare, then blam.
I utterly refuse to put a 50A fuse back in it.
but so much for running it off the outside 12V caravan connection.

A quick look on eBay shows that 30 amps is the typical maximun current quoted for a twin cylinder compressor of this type. That is when they bother to quote a figure. So a 50 amp fuse isn't out of order as 30 is too small, I've not seen a 40 amp so 50 amp is just right.

I'm with Inc, anything over 10 amps I use an Anderson connector.

Deano