I had an Electrical fire!

[WARWAG]

Well this year has not exactly been stellar for me and today was the icing on the cake. We sold my New Truck and picked up the wife a used Jeep to help on the Bills side of things. I told her I would keep my M1028 as my daily driver. She has been great for sure. Today after picking up a diesel filler neck (for second fuel tank install) and cigarette lighter plug at the junk yard I thought life was good. I plug the light in NOT PUSHED DOWN, and started up my truck. I get about 15 feet before the cab starts to fill up with smoke. Smoke is billowing out from under the hood as well. My wife is getting a bit excited right about now. I turn the key off and pull the hood latch. One of the wires of the battery is billowing smoke. My tools are locked in the back shell and I happen to remember the Kuhkri knife on the floor board passenger side. I whip her out and sever the 10 gauge wire thats on fire. Unfortunately she has already melted into the positive caple wire (24 volt) and is still going. I reach in and grab the VERY HOT wire and yank her off of the 24 volt wire. I then pat out the little fire with my burnt hand. Better than loosing the truck. Turns out it was my fault from the very beginning. When I installed my cigarette lighter plug to power my cell phone charger I neglected to install a fuse in the line. DUMB MISTAKE. Today when I plug that USED cigarette lighter plug it made a connection and kept right on charging. The 10 gauge wire can take quite a bit of power. I was able to clean out the burned up wire and tape what was burned through. I made it back home with no further problems.

Lessons learned:
#1 If you have a direct connection to the battery you should have the appropriate size fuse to protect your truck ect.
#2 Not all things cheap at the junk yard are a good deal. (I dont smoke but a cigarette lighter is great for starting fires. Even those you dont want.)

I will get some pics later but so far it doesnt seem to bad. It sure looked a lot worse when there was black melted plastic/rubber and other things starting to burn. After I cleaned those up I felt just a bit better. BUT it stills sucks.

I hope this helps protect someone in the future.

 

[WILDBOY6X6]

oops yup always fuse it fyi it is better to replace that wire that burned rather than just tape it.
A wire that gets that hot will loose its ability to Carry a load,so if it gets hot again will not last.

Steve

 

[WARWAG]

I dont think you understand what I said. That wire completely and utterly burned up. What I taped was where it had melted into parts of the other wiring (24 volt wire) ect. I taped those just to get me home safely. My plan is to replaced what needs to be replaced. It didnt look as bad after I got her home and cleaned up all the burnt melted crud. Still there are a few places that need looking at closely. The good news is that the 24 volt wire can be replaced pretty easily. The other wires were for my driving lights. Those can also be replaced. If thats all there is then I am one lucky guy. I still need to crawl twist contort and look up under the dash to see if there are any burnt wires. So far from what I could see it was a clean run not touching any other wires. But I still need to get up under there and look closely. It surely could have been worse.

 

[roveroverme]

Wow, I am glad things didn't go catastrophically wrong. A lesson learned.