I had installed aftermarket fog lights. I wired them up to the battery, and they were working great for like a year or so. Today, I turn them on, and I hear a pop. I'm like, what was that noise?! Then I notice that the LED on the switch wasn't lit. So I flicked it on and off a few times. No luck. So I waited until after work, and I came home. I pulled into my garage, and popped open the hood, and low and behold, the fuse holder for the lights was scortched badly! It wasn't scortched yesterday, because I put some washer fluid in, and I checked them, and there was nothing wrong.

My question... why did this happen?! As it scared the crap out of me. :o

 

probably overloaded a fuse, that might be why you heard a pop?

how many fuses were bad?

 

The scary part was the fuse didn't pop. I think the pop was the arc.

Here is an example of exactly what got burnt up:



It had a 15 amp fuse in it that came with the lights. I'm beginning to wonder if the AWG of the wire was too small, or else the fuse holder couldn't handle it. It just seems rather odd, that it would just out of no where do this to me.

 

that is really odd.


good thing nothing happened

 

Yeah... I'm still upset that it happened. But it will give me a reason to get new lights... I was thinking of getting some SuperDuty square foglights off of ebay and wiring them up to work. This time doing ALL the wiring myself, rather than working with a "premade" wiring harness from some Chinese company.

Originally that was what I was going to do... but I wanted the extra light.

Oh well, it will give me a cool project to work on.

Just glad the truck didn't burn up on me.

 

i've had some issues in the past with them fuses too. i swapped them all out for the plug-in more modern style.

 

Buy an All American product next time!.......

 

Good thing your logbook wasn't in there.

 

is that 18 awg? i would definetely always use 12 awg with a heavy duty spade fuse holder going off the battery like that, and always wire up your own stuff, esp with cheapo chinese companies

 

X2!

I was going to do that, but I didn't know how long I was planning on keeping these lights. Lesson learned!

Yes, it's 18 AWG, and just from experience, with 110W being drawn at 12v, needs at least 16 AWG min. But I chanced it, and I almost burned down my truck. Not good.

Definite lesson learned!!!

 

my efans fuse AND FUSE HOLDER smoldered and burnt up, the entire thing was grey from how bad it burnt.

 

Could you imagine what a tragedy it'd be if you lost your logbook? I am glad nothing happened to ya, bud.