what is this red, two screw electrical part? (Fusible Link)

[dochawk]

Can anyone tell me what this is?

It shows +12 on the front (near arrow head), whether key off or on, and 0 on the other side either way. It has no continuity in either direction.

I found it while hunting for fusible links and such.

It and the wires to it look like they're meant to carry serious current. The front side (by arrowhead) goes into the fuse box, and the other seems to disappear into the firewall to the passenger compartment.

I'm on an electrical hunt. Once we got this back on the road, it decided to not charge the battery any more. And now it won't even quite kick over (maybe one cylinder fires after a couple of seconds of cranking).

With a fully charged battery, turning the key to on only brings it to the left hand side of the battery icon, which I take it is all under 12v (even though the battery reads 12.6).

And when it was last running, the single lead on the alternator read 15v, even though the battery was at 12.6.

 

[dochawk]

I ended up taking it out (I seem to have lost *all* hesitation about taking things apart!).

At that point, it was recognizable as some kind of fuse.

O'RIley's and Autozone both bombed out, but Napa has them for $7.50 (and even they had to do some looking through their machine!)

so I can nurse it to a start now, and was able to move it out of the driveway to work on the transmission of my Fleetwood.