There have been issues with poor quality fuses in the market place. GM has a bulletin warning techs about inferior fuses. My daughter decided to make a science fair project testing the quality of different brand fuses because of this. We purchased 5 amp fuses of all the different brands we could find. Only 2 brands blew at anywhere near the correct amperage. All the other brands failed to blow with the testing apparatus we made. I took the ones that failed to blow before the 10 amps which was the maximum we could test with her set up and tested them at work where we had amp meters and carbon piles capable of testing large loads. The supposedly 5 amp fuses we bought were taking up words of 60 amps to blow. One brand held all the way to 97 amps. If that was a short in a car that was built for a 5 amp circuit the entire harness would be melted and possibly cause a fire. After seeing this I will only use 2 brands, Buss and Little Fuse, I do not trust the rest. This is my personal opinion and I know there may be other brands of quality fuses out there, but these 2 brands are both used as OE equipment in cars and should be trustworthy. With all the electronics in todays cars and the extreme expense of repairs a few bucks saved on a cheap fuse is not worth the risk. Trust me I have hand wired more than a few melted harnesses and the cost is a lot.
