Let's just say I have a fuse... and I have my alarm plugged into it, my led scanner, and my power seat...

Anyhow, today the fuse burnt out and if any of you saw my old wiring job you'd think I was crazy.

I decided to clean it up a bit. So I stopped at Radio shack and bought some electrical tape and a new fuse...

Went to plug everything in suddenly SMOKE EVERYWHERE!!!!

the wire was glowing red in one part too, so i immediately pulled out the fuse and burnt my fingers while I was doing that (nothing too major)...


In any case, until further notice I unplugged my seats and scanner...

 

Theres your problem you halfassed the fix

 

Yeap heat shrink and solder are the only way to do electrical. I don't even like to use but connectors and such.

 

 

alex,

you may be good at some things...but electronics you arent..

if you need help with something im sure that someone on here will help you..wed all rather help then see you kill yourself or lose your car because you were unsure of what to do..

iroc2nv

 

Your witre started glowing red and smoking because it is not physically large enough of a witre guage to support the current needed. You should break up your circuits, 1 circuit for the alar and scanner, one for your power seats, fuse BOTH of them separately, and make sure the main power wire feeding both circuits is large enough to handle the total current. 10AWG wire should be good.

 

Odds are he didn't have everything turned on when he first hooked them up (no comment if they were), so if the wire immediately started to burn the insulation off he must've shorted it out somwhere. Assuming he still had a fuse inline at this point with a reasonable amperage it should've just popped the fuse, unless the wire was WAY too small (numerically large) of a gauge.

 

Basically, the wire size has to be large enough to handle whatever current your fusing for. Take your fuse amperage, and multiply it by 125%(at least) to be sure.

 

it's been working fine all together for a year

but no doubt the wire got fried...

 

It could work fine for five years till you get the one shorted wire, and it burns down while parked and your at the mall or something...

 

Like I said, it's more likely it was a short rather than the devices themselves drawing too much current through inadequate wiring. The fact that it happened just as he hooked up to the power source further backs this theory. Still, the fuse should've blown before the insulation melted unless it's rated freakishly high.