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I think I was wrong, Cameron.
You have made it plainer. The concept of the choke cable being abandoned and disconnected from the business end did not enter into my fuzzy view through the wire between us. How it gets involved with a map light -- well without a 122 handy, I'll not get that picture as easily as I can stretch my memory to the last car I drove with a manual choke (a 69 Econoline). But it is plain to me you know where the short got its source.
To analyze, the electrical circuit needs to be inventoried. Each element (mostly wires and hunks of metal) makes contact with its neighbor forming a series. In your event, the inventory of all the wiring up to where you tied in the in-line fuse holder can be disregarded. From that point there's the fuse holder's wire, its contact, the fuse end cap, the fuse element, the other end cap, the other terminal, the wire, the contact with the choke cable, its internal elements and contacts, the hardware between it and the car body, etc., until the battery is reached again.
If the resistance in all those elements and contacts (plus what I disregarded) adds up to more than about 1.3 ohms, the 10A fuse will be surviving at its rated capacity, and possibly about 130 watts of power will be consumed somewhere along that inventory of metal bits and their junctions. Compare the fire starting ability of, say a 100 watt light bulb, or a 100 watt block heater. I was wrong -- that could melt plastic. And the springy, high carbon stuff choke cables were wound with might well be poor enough conductors to contribute the bulk of that 1.3 ohms or more.
Your selection of a 10A fuse isn't to blame here, even though you may be thinking a smaller one might have prevented the meltdown. That untethered choke cable could have landed with the same result in any exposed wiring, including one that may have needed 10A or more to run its load (like the heater blower or windshield wiper for instance).
--
Art Benstein near Baltimore
Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocaine during the root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication.
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