Jeff Wisnia wrote:


Automotive fuses...

Today's mail brought me a Safety Recall notice from Harbor Freight
telling me to stop using, remove any in use, and return the 120 piece
Mini-Blade Automotive Fuse Assortment I'd tacked onto an order I placed
with them a few months ago, because getting 120 fuses for $4.99 seemed
like a good deal. (TOO good a deal I guess...)

They're paying the postage, will refund $4.99 and gave me a "$5.00 Off
coupon" good till next February.

The recall notice includes this explanation:

"Specifically, manufacturing inconsistencies max exiat with the
materials, connections or size of the fuse elements which could result
in the fuses failing to protect the circuit from exessive current which
could cause damage to a vehicle and possibly a fire."

What's next folks?

The fuse issue isn't as funny as the "Stove Bolt Assortment" I bought
from Harbor Freight several years ago and stuck on the shelf. When I
finally wanted to use eight matching fasteners rather than the onsies
and twosies I can get from my "hell box" I went to that assortment, only
to find that all the 10-24 nuts in it had missed the threading operation
and had smooth bore holes in them.

Just for ****s and grins I wrote a letter to HF and taped a couple of
the unthreaded nuts to it. I described the problem and explained that I
assumed the threads were on backorder and asked when they expected to
ship them to me. I wasn't sure what that would get me, but figured
someone might get a laugh out of it and maybe send me another box of
fasteners.

Unfortunatly, my letter was answered by some ditzy woman with no sense
of humor because I all I got was a letter from her saying my complaint
exceeded their allowable time limit for returns and there was nothing
they could do about it now.

Jeff



I did a repair job on a machine that snapped 12 bolts on the end of the
hydraulic chamber. They had gotten loose and snapped one at a time.
I replaced them with 16 new ones I think they were 12 mm metric bolts.
The bolts immediately snapped under the pressure. I went back and
checked the regulated pressure and it was normal. I put 12 more bolts
that were bought from a well known fasten supply company. The second
set of bolts snapped too. I had one of the other new bolts tested since
the break surface did not look right, it was irregular and very rough
rather than a relatively smooth surface that I was used to seeing on
broken bolts. The test came back that the bolt broke at 24 k lbs. The
spec on that size bolt should have been about 60 k lbs. Guess where
they came from. Imagine what would have happened if they were used to
hold a critical part of a birdge together.


John