I finally got around to taking a pic. Here is where I bent and broke off the old fuse, just take and bend back and forth a few times at the base of the old 350 amp fuse it will snap. Now take a new Del City MEGA 350 amp fuse and place on the poles. Bolt down as normal. It's much easier to replace, higher quality fuse, and much much cheaper!

Link to purchase: https://www.delcity.net/store/MEGA-F...oaArftEALw_wcB

 

Thanks for the pic and info. I ordered a few of these to have on hand in case my car ever decides to blow that fuse again. Much cheaper than buying a whole new fuse block. Not knowing what caused mine to blow on day one of owning the car brand new, it's cheap insurance in case it ever goes crazy again. Although it isn't what happened to mine, I know hooking up one of those jump
starters wrong will blow it.

 

Awesome glad I can help!

 

I am waiting on my fix. I ordered a Magnuson 2300.

 

Found my actual failure. Kong 2.175 pulley locked itself onto the snout. This pulley is supposed to work without machining the snout....

 

Well **** I trailered my car away for the hurricane coming and decided to crank it one last time to see if it would do the same thing. The damn car cranked up and runs perfectly fine! No noise nothing. It’s still low on oil pressure. I know before when their is bearing failures you hear it. Especially when they go. I could have swore my motor cranked up then it made what seemed like a bearing noise and shut right down. Blowing a fuse. Now after it sitting for a week it cranked up and runs fine!?!? Making me feel like I don’t know what the hell I am talking about lol. And I have built engines installed engines you name it for 20 years. I still think it’s something internal I may have a bad oil pump. Maybe a clogged passage way?? So I am most likely still going to take the motor out and inspect and may still throw a 416 built short in. I’ve been wanting to do that anyway.

 

sounds like a spun bearing, early stages of failure they a bit quiet untill warmed up, i hope not for your sake. low oil pressure is concerning. just sharing thoughts and past experience. god luck man, hope its nothing bad.

 

Thanks for the link and picture - I bought the fuses for back up. I'm still a curious why (small sample set here, but enough 350A fuses blown in the last 9-12 months). Not sure what caused mine to blow - the car was not driven for about 2-3 weeks and that's when my problem occurred. My car is a 2016 Corvette Stingray bought new (has 46K miles today as it's a daily driver). Because of home remodeling, I parked the C7 in the garage at work (and driving other cars) for 2-3 weeks. When it lit up only lights but no DIC, I thought the battery (nearly 5 years old) was the culprit and replaced it. But now it appears after numerous debugging, the 350A fuse has blown.

The car is nearly stock electronically; there is remnants of a Curb Alert installed at the front fuse box but hardly a cause for blowing 350A fuse.

And with the small but recent cases of other cars having their 350A fuse suspected of failing, I am wondering what is the cause?

 

Since it happened to me, I have been following as many posts as I could find about the 350A fuse blowing. That fuse provides power to the fuse box in the engine compartment, and to the starter. I don't have a service manual wiring diagram, so I don't know if it provides power to any other circuits.

You're right, there aren't many reported cases of this fuse blowing.

I do know that hooking up a charger wrong, or one of those portable jump starters wrong, will cause it to blow.

Other trends I noticed - people who install headers have not properly shielded the wire to the starter from the heat thrown off by the headers, and that has caused a few of the reported issues.
I have seen at least two cases reported where people installing pulleys for a certain brand of superchargers tightened them down to a point where some screw interfered with the rotation and basically locked up the engine. When they went to start it the starter motor of course couldn't turn, began overheating, and the fuse blew.
Then there is the case in this thread, similar to one or two others I ran across. Anything that causes the starter not to be able to crank the engine will blow that fuse.

None of this explains my case and a couple others I ran across. In my case I picked up my car that morning brand new, and drove about 200 miles to my sister's house. Right after I left the dealer lot, the service rear axle message came on in the DIC. I figured brand new car, WTF, hit OK and the message went away and I've never seen it since. All was great until the last 2 miles. I stopped at a traffic light. When the light turned green, I could not get it to go into any gear (manual 7 speed trans). I shut it off and on about 3 or 4 times and it finally went into gear. Then I noticed the clutch pedal was sticking about halfway, and to get it all the way up I had to hook my left foot behind it and pull. The car started running really rough and shaking but I managed to get it to my sisters driveway and pulled in. I put it in neutral and the engine was still running. I decided to pull up a tad, and put the clutch pedal down, put it in 1st, started to let off the clutch, which was still sticking, and the engine just died and I had to use the emergency door releases to get out. The clutch pedal was again stuck half way up. I tried to restart, nothing, no dash lights, no starter clicks, no nothing. DOA. In retrospect, I wonder if pressing and holding the starter with my foot off the clutch and brake would have brought me into maintenance mode but I didn't think of it at the time. I have the AAA super duper Platinum plan which gives you one free tow up to 200 miles, so I had it flatbedded back to the dealer who diagnosed that the fuse was blown, but could not figure out what made it blow. They pulled the fuse block off another car on the lot and put it into my Z06 and all has been fine since, 2600 miles and 9 months.

So maybe hitting the starter 3 or 4 times with pausing in between to try to wrestle the car into gear may have overheated the starter, but the car still ran, got me about 2 miles to my sisters house, and I had dash lights so the fuse wasn't blown, just a mushy clutch pedal and the engine running really rough like it was misfiring on one or two cylinders (never verified by stored codes). The 350A fuse didn't actually blow until I put it in gear and tried to move forward in my sister's driveway.

I suspect either a defective fuse, or the fuse block wasn't tightened down properly at the factory and during my drive it loosened up. I don't know what else to chalk it up to. I have a lift at home and looking at everything underneath the car, there is no sign anywhere of sparking and arcing/burn marks that you might expect from blowing a 350A fuse.

All I know is that I now have a spare fuse block on hand, and several of those Del City 350A Mega fuses in case the problem ever rears its ugly head again. Bizarre. Not a common issue, but has happened to several people for no apparent reason.

If this happens to you, please post your story about it, and any causes or solutions. Thanks and sorry for the long read. Hope this helps someone in the future.

 

On a side note, does anyone else think the fuse panel on top of the battery looks like it was put together in someone's basement? What an odd design.

 

Just received my 2 spare 350A fuses today. Just in case the poo hits the fan


Elmer

 

You were dead on. I just was in denial. In the middle of putting my new Texas Speed fully built 416ci stroker in right now with tons of new extra goodies so it worked out in the end! Thanks for the insight you were for sure correct.

 

Well, about 2 years ago I came back from 1 week vacation and car didn’t start. I put a charger on it and changed my fob battery. It worked fine and the 350 A fuse was apparently OK.

Now I did put a jumper on the car a few nights ago but the symptoms were already that of a blown fuse. So not definitive that jump killed the fuse.

Thanks to the post about Del City fuse. I ordered 6 in case there is a debug nightmare that the root cause is still there vs. a transient jump that may have killed it.

 

No. GM employs some fairly competent people and I would hazard a guess the unusual fuse layout may have some durability issue ( maybe corner case) that warrants it. We may be all excited an inexpensive fuse design was found by our fellow C7 jockeys. But I’m sure that the C7 engineers knew how to do that too. The question is why did they go with an apparently more complex design? This design was not an afterthought; but it’s not clear what it is trying to solve.

 

You would never run an unfused hot wire from the rear to the front of the car. It could be a fire hazard if the insulation was damaged in some way between the battery and first fuse. The same could be said for power to the rear fuse block.

 

I don’t believe anyone is questioning the presence of the fuse. The question is why the proprietary metal bracket that GM apparently bonds onto the 350A fuse? Simply breaking off the blown fuse and using an off- the-shelf 350A fuse apparently works. So why did GM spend the money to design the bonded fuse bracket? Reduce corrosion impact from the non-AGM vented battery? Shock and vibration solution over 100K miles? I can’t believe it was to make money from us poor C7 jockeys. After looking at the design, I’m comfortable using the work around and I have an AGM battery so corroding of the fuse end to the broken bracket should not be an issue.

 

It may be just as simple as making things quicker to install down the assembly line. That one panel with all the fuses just fits in there pretty easy VS having to bolt down 7+ individual fuses. Who really knows? Sure some engineer designed that up is my theory to just improve simplicity. They probably figured blowing that big fuse is a result of a much larger problem anyway (like mine, spun bearing) so maybe they just didn't consider it being a part that would break often. Nothing wrong with your questions for sure!

 

Well, my C7 is now finally starting. Here's a quick summary:
1. Car was not driven 2-3 weeks and failed to start - battery had 2015 date stamp on it, 46K miles since new
2. Assumed battery was dead, bought an Interstate AGM battery from Costco
3. Mistakenly thought 350A fuse blown - it was intact (but I already bought spare aftermarket 350A fuses for diagnosing it)
4. Unable to tighten Positive clamp on new AGM battery - positive terminal was just a bit too small.
5. Returned battery to Costco, bought a regular battery from Walmart and installed.
6. Car initially powered up but no door opening nor DIC lighting up.
7. Disconnected and resigned to towing to garage.
8. In act of desperation, I rechecked the clamps - the positive clamp was on but not tightened.
9. Once both clamps were tight, put fob in steering column, DIC light up and started.
10. Car was in 'transport mode' and turned off using the procedure found on web (not quite accurate, but got it done).

I don't know why the fob was ignored for several days when I tried to replace battery. Fuse was OK.

My theory is the battery died and I got a slightly undersized Positive post on the AGM battery - causing me to think other problems (blown fuse).

So, car is running fine now - will take my fuses and solder on thick wires/copper eye connectors as emergency fuse jumpers for emergency use.

Hope this helps someone in the future and thanks to all that helped me check out the issues during the debug phase.

Eddie

 

Interesting - you have a 'missing' nut on the 100A terminal immediately above the Positive terminal - just like my 2016. I thought it was missing from the factory so I bought a nut at Home Depot and tightened it. But if your car is also 'missing' the nut, maybe it doesn't 'need' it? Seems odd to have such a loose connection and the C7 is DEFINITELY sensitive if the positive/negative clamps are not 100% tight.

 

Same fuse is available from Amazon, half the cost & it is the Little Fuse brand. See link.