Linears: Tell me what I need to know before I buy

Electricity follows the path of least resistance.
If the ground is bad, it could seek ground through the ECM melting it

 

I disagree, it won't fry it, it will mess with the ECM but won't fry it, and if you can provide proof of it, I will say I'm wrong but even Cummings and Detroit diesel both say no and they've tested them for military applications in worst rf conditions, beside testing them different ways for trucks.

Rabbi, of course I don't compare techs, mainly because anyone can call themselves a tech. With the thousands of amp makers out there, the hundreds of them ripped off others, there is a lot of crap and junk out there.

As for cleaning an amp up, it takes more than a few things being done to do so and venture to guess that if these amps are actually tested as they test other amps, they may not hold up well. For that matter a few are just pure junk in both design and components so internals of the amp will cause just as much harmonics as would overdriving it.

I think the issue of your picture is an electrical short, not anything else. A lack of a fuse may also have contribute to it, knowing that you don't need a lot of heat to set things off, an oversized fuse has been known to cause a melt down. The problem is I wasn't there and like a lot of other CB things, those great horror stories seem to propagate throughout this internet thing.

 

This is what I use...

 

Is that a slow acting breaker or a fast acting one?

I've been using blue sea breakers for a long time. They are made for quick action, however they stopped making them. So I went to another brand and had issues with them not tripping but delaying it enough to allow spikes to happen in the system.

 

Serious stuff!!!

I was using a simple 150AMP fuse.

 

I don't know the technical aspects of it but I do know that it serves its purpose

 

Fuses get expensive if you have to replace them often

 

Which model are you looking for I noticed Blue Sea still makes them.
Here's another one I found.
https://powerwerx.com/blue-sea-187-...cuit-breaker?gclid=cn7mw86ahm4cfzckaqodqkwe3a

 

the ecm in a truck is the brain of the truck... it literally runs everything in the truck. have your cruise control take a serious dump and I mean more than just the speed sensor. and you'll have to replace the ecm. already had it happen and the cheap bas--turd I was working for would not replace it.