Hi all,
I let a buddy of mine borrow my '99 ram today. When I went to his house to get my truck back I see him sitting on the front bumper with the hood up reading the owners manual (haha I leave this guy alone for 1 hour with my truck and he already breaks something!)

Apparently he tried to adjust the power mirrors and it blew a fuse. I thought, no biggie, I'll just pop in a new one and be on my way. What I didn't count on was the security system dodge decided to place on that one fuse. There's some kind of clip that slides over the fuse that locks it into place. Because of the location of the fuse, it is impossible to remove that clip without mangling it. It took me 15 minutes of twisting and pulling with a pair of vise grips to get the stupid thing off. Changing the fuse itself took all of 2 seconds.

So what's the purpose of this clip? Can I just leave it off?

 

I think the clip is just there so they don't loose the fuse durring shipment from the factory. There are a couple of fuses that don't get plugged in untill it gets preped at the dealership. These fuses always had like a plastic frame around themand sat about 1/4" higher than the rest, you just pushed them in place when you did the dealer prep. Other than that I don't know of any other reason they are there. Maybe someone else does.

But, IMO, you should be fine without it.

 

What I think you are describing is a wire tap for the fuse block. Many newbies to the audio world will tap their remote wire in like that. All it does is provide space for you to push a small gauge wire down on the fuse terminal and gain power that way. Mine had one on it from the ancient cell phone antenna setup it had in it when I first got it.