Cooked the wiring loom

[wokket]

G'day guys,

Started the beasty up last night to drive home, had just started moving when the inside of teh cabin started filling electrical smoke.

Jumped out, killed power to everythiung I could, opened the doors to try and air the truck out enough I could stand to have my head inside it..... no more smoke.

Left everything turned off that I could for the drive home, and the only casualty I could see was the aux tank switch, no dash lights on it.

Ripped the dash apart this morning, and it's a bit worse than I'd hoped for.

Looks like an unused wire on the converter plug from the 'Cruiser to my headunit had 12v, has earthed out, and melted the loom instead of blowing a fuse

Is it normal to use wires that can't carry the fuse current as an added safety precaution, or just something special about mine??

Any ideas how much of the loom I'll need to remove to replace with an equiv section I acquire from the wreckers??

Is it going to be easier to wind the insulation tape back, and solder in another dozen or so fine wires (shudder) ??

Just go to an auto-sparky and let them have the heart ache?

Cheers for the help guys... I'm feeling like a bit of a dick about leaving the extra wire in there, I totally forgot to remove it when I soldered the converter loom up.

Tim

 

[Rich]

G'day guys...Is it normal to use wires that can't carry the fuse current as an added safety precaution, or just something special about mine??...

Nope, in all cases the fuse is to blow before wire insulation melts and burns.

 

[wokket]

Okie Dokes, an update after another 30min or so of investigation: The Taillight fuse has got hot enough to melt the plastic body of the fuse, but the actual circuit still looks pristine....

Note to self, don't use cheap fuses

 

[Mickldo]

It will all depend on your level of expertise with electrical work, amount of "downtime" available, budget and parts availability.
The quickest, cheapest option would be to solder in some wires. Make sure you use heatshrink on the joins and make them as small and neat as you can. After hooking them all up put split loom tubing over the loom to protect it and insulate it better. Or you could replace that section of loom if you can find one of the same model with the same options.
BTW, if you have melted wires really close to the connector plug the tiny connector pins are available from autoelecs. They have a little tag that you push to get them out of the connector.

 

[IdahoDoug]

Man, glad you got 'er shut down before something caught fire. Looks like you were close to having some wires weld themselves together and then it might not have mattered if you shut off power....

DougM

 

[offroadkid]

Good thing nothing serious happened. On another note- at my work we call that letting the "factory smoke" out!

 

[Mickldo]

Just going by your description there it looks like your bare wire that caused the problem was probably the wire from the dash light dimmer. Might pay to have a look at the other dash light wires to see if they were damaged as well.

 

[wokket]

Well spotted Mick, it was the dash light / dimmer wire that caused the problems. My headuni doesn't have a seperate dash light wire, and I forgot to remove it from the loom when I plugged the head unit in.

It seems to be the only wire that is really damaged, so the auto sparkies are going to cut off the cruier plug above the damage, and wire my headunits loom in directly... The dimmer wire will be cut off higher up and taped up in the loom out of the way... about AU$60 - AU$80.

Only other item that I know wasn't working properly was the aux tank switch, I'll deal with it later.

 

[Mickldo]

Your lucky thats all it was. It could have been a lot worse.
I always try to add extra insulation to any of my wiring as Australian driving conditions as you know aren't exactly the smoothest and the extra insulation gives you an extra couple of thousand potholes and corrugations before giving you trouble.