ktm Posted August 4, 2010 Share Posted August 4, 2010 (edited) About a week ago I met my wife for dinner at a nice little restaurant in town. I decided to drive the Z as it was a gorgeous evening for a cruise. I get to the restaurant without issue and proceed to enjoy my meal. When we get outside it is dark. My wife gets in her car and starts to head home. I hop in the Z, let it warm up, and head off too. I get no more than 1000 feet from the restaurant and start to smell smoke. Within another 100 feet the odor is quite strong and I can see smoke coming from my vents by other's headlights. I frantically pull into a deserted parking lot and turn off the car and lights. The car stops but the parking lights will not turn off. Smoke is billowing out of my cabin and engine bay at this time. I check for a glow around the car and pop the hood. I see smoke emanating from a point in my harness near the radiator support. I pull all of my Maxi fuses that I can. One of them is too damn hot to touch and the holder is melting. I can't access my fuse box due to my modifications (used button head bolts to secure it in place - lesson learned) so I rip the positive terminal off the battery. The negative terminal is under the inspection lid and I can not get a good grip on the terminal. By this time there is a visible flame by the radiator support. I manage to put the flame out and breath a sigh of relief. I call AAA and get a tow home. The following day I inspect the damage. The car is ok as is everything else save for the dash and engine bay harness. My car is heavily modified so my engine bay harness only carries the lights, starter, alternator and battery feeds. The driver's side side marker light wire is completely melted from the bullet to the combo switch. I am talking about 8+ feet of bare, exposed wire. The nearest I can tell the insulator slipped off the bullet connect and it made contact with the front valence, shorting out. I am now rewiring my car with a Painless 12-circuit fuse box and my own harness. A fire extinguisher will also be ordered shortly (been putting it off for a little while). Check those insulators folks. Edited August 4, 2010 by ktm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blue72 Posted August 4, 2010 Share Posted August 4, 2010 (edited) Whew, good to see it (and you) got out relatively unharmed. I just got through completely unwrapping and rewrapping my dash harness because of something similar. The passenger side switch in the door for the overhead courtesy light had broken into little pieces. This let the contact dangle until it touched something it didn't agree with, and POOF! the whole thing melted or burned off all the insulation on the entire length of the wire as well as other wires it connected to. I unwrapped the entire harness because that simple wire goes from one end of the thing to the other. I happened to have a spare dash harness to harvest parts from and ordered non-sticky OEM style harness wrap to do it back up like stock. I've got a new switch now, but I'll be checking every single connector against a wiring diagram when I go to put it all back in place. Edited August 4, 2010 by blue72 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Challenger Posted August 4, 2010 Share Posted August 4, 2010 Good save! Anyone remember the thread that got sent to the tool shed about whether or not to carry around a fire extinguisher in the car? Apparently its probably a safe thing to do on our old cars. haha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike kZ Posted August 4, 2010 Share Posted August 4, 2010 I have a battery quick disconect, and a fire extinguisher, you just never know. Glad your car didn't burn down! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.