[Bill]

The cylindrical glass fuses are indeed sometimes called bayonet fuses, because the fuseholder that accepts them is sometimes called a bayonet holder. Until recently, a lot of these cylindrical fuses were used in cars. Most of them would be snapped into a fuse block containing many such fuses. Occasionally, though, a single fuse would be carried in an in-line fuseholder, which has two wires sticking out of the ends, and is wired directly into the circuit. This is what the TM factory uses for the battery fuse.

With the cylindrical fuses, both the fuse block and the inline bayonet holder were troublesome. Most cars have switched over to the flat blade type of fuse - the same fuses you find in the TM converter. The TM battery fuse is about the only place you'll still find a cylindrical fuse. You want to trash this original fuseholder, and replace it with a blade-type fuseholder. It was easy. This is what I did.

First, I removed the negative (white and bare copper) wire from the battery to prevent shorts.

The old fuseholder has two wires coming out of it. One was twist-connected onto the black battery wire, secured with a yellow wire nut. The other had a crimped-on ring lug - this is what goes under the wing nut on the battery post.

I removed the wing nut from the battery, and removed the ring lug. Then I removed the yellow wire nut and untwisted the connection. This gave me the fuseholder, free in my hand, and I gave it a nice arc about 20 feet into the trash can.

Then I went to the automotive department at WalMart and bought a couple 30-amp blade type automotive fuses, and an in-line automotive fuseholder that takes this blade-type fuse. The new fuseholder has two wires coming out of the ends, just like the original bayonet fuse holder. I crimped a ring lug onto one of the fuseholder wires, using the crimping tool and lug assortment that I had thoughtfully picked up in the same department at WalMart. Then I twisted the other wire onto the end of the TM's black battery wire, and replaced the yellow wire nut (actually, I soldered and shrink-sleeved the connection, but that's just me). Connected the ring lug to the battery, plugged in the fuse, reconnected the negative wire, and voila! Done. I am a lot more confident about the battery fuse since I did this.

Just as a note, if I were doing it again, I would probably use the self-resetting circuit breaker mentioned in another post. But the important thing is to get rid of that old fuseholder.

Bill