*** Help!! Had small electrical fire, now nothing works..

seanxgodfrey

seanxgodfrey

New member
Hey guys, had a small electrical fire under my driver power seat, not knowing that this happened a notebook was caught on fire after I left the runner and came back 30-40 minuets later to a cabin filled with smoke, luckily I closed my windows! Now everything was working fine till I got to O'rilleys and they sold me the wrong 30a fuse. After realizing it wasn't the right ampage or whatever nothing on the truck works now aside from tail lights and headlights.. Car won't turn over at all, not even a click as if my battery was dead.

Got to the body harness to notice that my blue and white dotted wire shorted and is now damaged fusing a few others with it..

Any ideas as to why the car won't start or anything? I've been told to just replace the harness but I'm still so lost as to how the car won't start now. All fuses are pretty much good (or at least the ones I need), Can I do anything with insurance? Thanks for reading.
 
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OK, relax, we got this.

But we are going to need pictures! Then you need to disconnect the battery and repair damaged wires. At least separate them and prevent them from touching each other or grounding. Then we can reconnect the battery and start troubleshooting.

Can you explain exactly what burnt? A notebook, a cabin, the seat?

Slow down, this shouldn't be too bad.


:popcorn:
 
IBallEngineer said:
OK, relax, we got this.

But we are going to need pictures! Then you need to disconnect the battery and repair damaged wires. At least separate them and prevent them from touching each other or grounding. Then we can reconnect the battery and start troubleshooting.

Can you explain exactly what burnt? A notebook, a cabin, the seat?

Slow down, this shouldn't be too bad.


:popcorn:
Click to expand...

Here we go!

A notebook was what actually burnt as well as the wire that goes into the power seats, which then heated up to cause a more wires to burn near it.. but here are some pictures. Not too crazy of a fire, just a full time student who works 30 hours a week and is now car less hahaha.

This is after I ghetto wrapped all the wires together, now I've taken them part as well as the wires under the plastics near the doors.
 

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Wow, that looks bad! J/K, it doesn't. I believe that box is the module for the factory security system, which might be why you aren't starting. Can you reconnect all the wires? Or is that not within your capability range?

If we are able to connect everything, we can start trouble shooting.

:couch2:
 
IBallEngineer said:
Wow, that looks bad! J/K, it doesn't. I believe that box is the module for the factory security system, which might be why you aren't starting. Can you reconnect all the wires? Or is that not within your capability range?

If we are able to connect everything, we can start trouble shooting.

:couch2:
Click to expand...

Lol! Those wires are in tact ! The side if it is a little melted but I opened it up and everything inside looks fine, no sign of damage on the ECU itself, so yes, we can plug that in! I can no longer plug in my seat though because those wires were all melted together.
 
seanxgodfrey said:
I can no longer plug in my seat though because those wires were all melted together.
Click to expand...

OK, make sure you separate them anyway, don't want anymore fires. If the melted wires are only in the seat itself, just don't connect them and we won't worry about them for now.

After you connect the battery, we need to check the 120A Alt fuse, the 30A (AM2) fuse, lower middle of engine fuse block and the 40A (AM1) fuse, lower right of the grouping of 4. You may need to pull these and check with a meter or test light.

Maybe [MENTION=10169]TheDurk[/MENTION] wants to jump in and give us some wisdom!

:couch2:
 
IBallEngineer said:
OK, make sure you separate them anyway, don't want anymore fires. If the melted wires are only in the seat itself, just don't connect them and we won't worry about them for now.

After you connect the battery, we need to check the 120A Alt fuse, the 30A (AM2) fuse, lower middle of engine fuse block and the 40A (AM1) fuse, lower right of the grouping of 4. You may need to pull these and check with a meter or test light.

Maybe [MENTION=10169]TheDurk[/MENTION] wants to jump in and give us some wisdom!

:couch2:
Click to expand...

I will check those in a second, but the melted wires are not in the seat itself I must have written it wrong.. Those wires melted but then the heat from that after I had driven on it caused the blue wire with white polka dots to then heat up and it goes pretty far back that the current of heat went far back almost to my back seat, the blue wire with dots is definitely messed up.
 
seanxgodfrey said:
I will check those in a second, but the melted wires are not in the seat itself I must have written it wrong.. Those wires melted but then the heat from that after I had driven on it caused the blue wire with white polka dots to then heat up and it goes pretty far back that the current of heat went far back almost to my back seat, the blue wire with dots is definitely messed up.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you definitely want to isolate that situation. Otherwise it could happen again, or worse.
 
That might NOT be a security system. On the '97, the ECU for the RS3000 factory wireless door lock system was under the driver's seat. OP---did you have an alarm? If not, I'd suggest just leaving that box out of the truck while we fix the rest of it and live without remote door locks and power seat for now for now.


In addition to those mentioned, there may also be a 50 J/B fuse, which handles almost all circuits except the headlights so should be checked.

If one of those major fuses keeps blowing that would be a serious clue. But lets just remove the sick stuff and power up as much of the truck as we can and go from there.

This going to be a little tough as we don't have a good '97 EWD available to us.
 
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but the factory anti theft system is only passive, meaning the truck would still start even if the alarm was going off. So if that is the theft module, and you leave it disconnected, it should still start just fine. If you need specifics on what some of your burnt wiring is supposed to look like, let me know and I can snap some pics on specific things in my 97 for you to compare with. We'll get ya on the road in no time.
 
BlackCat914 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the factory anti theft system is only passive, meaning the truck would still start even if the alarm was going off. So if that is the theft module, and you leave it disconnected, it should still start just fine. If you need specifics on what some of your burnt wiring is supposed to look like, let me know and I can snap some pics on specific things in my 97 for you to compare with. We'll get ya on the road in no time.
Click to expand...

That may prove helpful! If you had a factory EWD and could scan all the pages and upload them that would be awesome too! Just sayin' :violin:

Hey, a fellow can dream
 
BlackCat914 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the factory anti theft system is only passive, meaning the truck would still start even if the alarm was going off. So if that is the theft module, and you leave it disconnected, it should still start just fine. If you need specifics on what some of your burnt wiring is supposed to look like, let me know and I can snap some pics on specific things in my 97 for you to compare with. We'll get ya on the road in no time.
Click to expand...

I think that's right--factory RS3000 alarm would not block start. The 'polka-dot' thing has me a little worried we may have something aftermarket involved as I have never seen any stock Toyota wire with polka-dots but I've never seen an RS3000. Does anyone have experience with polka-dots?
 
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Nothing specific to add, and it is likely not an issue here but just a reminder that you should wear gloves when working on anything that's burned! Certain types of rubber, when exposed to temps over 400C (I think) produce hydroflouric acid. You do NOT want to mess with that. Serious consequences.

Keep this in mind if you're ever working on something that's burned.
 
That's GOOD news. Means some hope you can get it running with minor intervention. Fuses are SUPPOSED to blow when sh!t happens.
 
TheDurk said:
That's GOOD news. Means some hope you can get it running with minor intervention. Fuses are SUPPOSED to blow when sh!t happens.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm saying.. After work tomorrow going to swap those out and then start carefully pulling apart all the melted wires and seeing what I need to replace and what not..
 
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