Replacing a car fuse might seem like a straightforward task, until you’re faced with a fuse box crammed in an awkward location and fuses that refuse to budge. Like many car owners, I recently encountered this frustration while trying to replace the cigar lighter fuse in my newly acquired 2015 Transit. What should have been a quick fix turned into a bit of a struggle. This experience led me to create a simple, yet effective, Tool For Removing Car Fuses. If you’ve ever wrestled with stubborn fuses, this DIY guide to making your own fuse puller might be just what you need.
While you can purchase dedicated fuse pullers, sometimes a homemade solution is quicker and more satisfying. Plus, crafting your own car fuse removal tool ensures you have one readily available whenever you need it. This guide details how to create a basic but functional tool for removing car fuses from readily available materials.
Here’s how to make your own fuse removal tool:
- Gather your materials: Start with a piece of spring steel, approximately 6 inches long, 1/8 inch wide, and 1/16 inch thick. Spring steel is ideal due to its stiffness and rust resistance. A great source for this is an old fish tape spool.
- Shape the tool: Use a plumber’s torch to heat the middle section of the steel. Once heated, bend it into a U-shape, ensuring the tips are about 1/2″ to 5/8″ apart.
- Temper the ends: Heat the tips of the U-shape to a glowing red to remove the temper from the steel. This makes them easier to shape. Allow the metal to cool down naturally.
- File the tips: File the ends of the cooled steel piece to make them flat. This provides a better surface for gripping the fuses.
- Create the gripping lip: Securely clamp one side of the U-shape in a vise, with the tip pointing upwards and only about 1/8 inch exposed above the vise.
- Peen the tip: Use a hammer to peen the exposed tip. The goal is to create a very small, inward-facing lip, around .05 inches or so, angled inwards at approximately 60 degrees. This lip is crucial as it’s what will grab onto the fuse. Without it, you would just have a makeshift pair of tweezers, ineffective as a fuse removal tool.
- Repeat for the other side: Repeat step 6 for the other tip of the U-shape to create a matching lip.
- Angle the tips: Use a grinder to angle the back and sides of the tips as shown in the images. This refines the tips and makes them more effective at sliding into tight spaces around fuses.
After successfully pulling the troublesome fuse with my newly crafted tool for removing car fuses, the next challenge was finding a replacement. I discovered that standard LittleFuse JCase fuses were incompatible with my Transit. A quick trip to the Ford dealership solved the problem. It turns out, proprietary designs, even for something as simple as a fuse, are more common than you might think in the automotive industry.
In conclusion, having a tool for removing car fuses, whether store-bought or DIY, is essential for any car owner. This simple homemade tool can save you frustration and time when dealing with blown fuses, especially in vehicles that use proprietary parts. While I jokingly considered patenting my “Ford Proprietary Fuse Pulling Tool,” the real reward is having a practical solution readily available in my glove compartment.
