Shortly after my in-laws coming to the U.S. the first thing they bought was a rice cooker. Not your average $10 crappy wal-mart rice cooker… but a $200 imported from Korean with 400 buttons (all in Korean) and a million bells and whistles. No really! It whistles when the rice is done.
Like every bad joke you’ve ever heard about Asians and their rice, my wife’s family can’t live without their rice! And this week a blown fuse in this overpriced crock pot has hampered their ability to cook rice. At least conveniently anyway. They can cook rice on the stove, but then no way to keep the extra rice warm. It’s also a bad superstition to throw away rice. Rice fried into these hard cookie shaped things have to be the worse thing I have seen them make with rice. Its like eating one large chuck of uncooked rice. The rice cooker is a Woonjin WPX-0702BC by Cucken.
I opened up the rice cooker, found the fuse and put a meter on it and sure enough its blown. That was the easy part. A trip to Radio Shack, Home Depot, Ace Hardware, and even Fry’s and this 3/4″ long tube fuse is nowhere to be found. The main problem, its 12.5 AMPS!!!
The best I found was a 10amp fuse at Fry’s, which was enough to get the LED and LCD’s to light up, but starting to cook and this fuse is toast as well. The home depot guy insisted that the fuse might be good and that we had to test it with a voltage meter, even after I insisted that I had. After he replaced a perfectly good battery, I then had to show him how to use the voltage meter. I thought it was common sense, but I guess if you’re 40 and making minimum wage at Home Depot you’re not the sharpest tack in the bunch.
Tip for those that don’t know how to meter a fuse,
- Turn meter on to any setting. Personally I like the setting that beeps, but any setting will do!
- Take the two wires that are plugged into the meter, there should be metal on the ends these are called leads.
- Touch the leads together…. note how the meter reacts. Does it beep or does the display change?
- Separate the leads… the meter should be quiet and display shouldn’t change (don’t touch the leads with your hands your body conducts electricity)
- Now take one lead touch one end of the fuse, then take the other lead and touch the other end of the fuse
- Note what the meter is doing (if this is too difficult for you, seriously re-think why you aren’t using the setting that beeps)
- If the meter reacts like step 3, fuse is good…. if meter reacts like step 4, fuse is bad!
After I made a poor attempt of insulting the guy with my sinister dry humor that no one understands but me, he opened a package of 6 amp fuses (the largest they had) and gave me one. Surprised that he was allowed to do such a thing I changed my attitude a little and graciously took it, even though I threw it away once I got home.
The fuse reads “T12.5AL 250V.” I am not 100% what the L or T mean but the A and V are Amps and Volts, which with my knowledge it should be the only thing that matters. Slow burn or fast acting is something I am learning about this week but still don’t know which this fuse is. Honestly if it says 12.5 amps, I’m buying it!
I have a couple other places here in Sacramento and Roseville I want to check out on Monday, but for the most part I am looking at a new fuse holder, some wire, and any fuse that is 12 amps and re-wiring the rice cooker to make it take the new fuse. If that doesn’t work then maybe we’ll just settle for some wire and review the fire insurance coverage on the house.
If anyone know of a place to buy these things online please point me in the right direction! I’m also willing to drive anywhere from San Jose to Sacramento if I have too. Sacramento or the Northern part of the San Francisco East bay is preferred (since I commute back and forth between the two a couple times a week), but as long as I can get this thing working and don’t have to spend another $200 is worth the trip.
) There are also places like 
