Edit:

A little background: I bought this 1998 Tacoma Ext Cab 4x4 for $1400 dollars off of one of my co-workers last week. I have a motorcycle and a daily driver. And so I wanted a truck to be my motorcycle hauler/project car

It is a 5 speed manual transmission, no rust (California). It has 275,000 miles but the top end was rebuilt at 150,000. The engine purrs because the owner was a married father of 3 and was meticulous about changing the oil every 3k miles. This was his daily driver. Unfortunately, he hit something on the right of the vehicle which cut a hole in the sheet metal and removed the door handle. Frame is straight and so I decided to pick it up for a cheap price. (Since it has high milage, and the mechanics I took it to all said I was getting a great deal.) I lucked out and found a door (same color) for 200 bucks at a junk yard. I'm going to replace that soon.

I took the truck to an audio shop looking to wire up my car for LED reverse lights and an LED bar. I had him install the reverse lights and install wiring for the LED bar once it arrived. I installed it when it arrived grounding the bar at the frame from the battery ground strap. He installed a switch plus relay grounding the relay to the wiring harness.


I recently wired an LED light bar to my truck and am getting some sort of short circuit. I turned on the car and smoke started coming out of the dash. I immediately turned it off. I inspected the truck and noticed that the Parking Brake wire melted though the pulley. The pulley looks like this: [​IMG]


Imagine the parking brake wire melting though half of it. I had to use pliers to pull that piece off of the car. What could cause this?

 

 

Upon further inspection it seems to be the fuel tank sender. I noticed the fuel gauge stopped working...






This is what it looked like when I removed it. Notice the bare copper above the blue wire. The wire had heated up so much that the insulation was burnt off. This went on throughout the vehicle until the grounding point. I'm so lucky the wire is only a ground and doesn't go into the main harness (which costs $1300 dollars for the part)






Here is how the shop wired the front light. The wire with the blue tab goes into a relay, but this is the low voltage side of the circuit. The brown wire goes all the way to the fuel sender unit through two harnesses below the corner of the door.

I feel somehow the low voltage relay ground became the high voltage relay ground. Anyone have any ideas? The smoke happened when I turned on the truck and so I'm guessing that wire became ground for the starter?

 

Did I not see this same thread on Tacoma world.

I can only say tell us what idiots hooked up your lights and caused this mess!!

They need to be known world wide !!

That wire sure carried a load of current !!

 

Haha yeah, I posted this Tacomaworld but it seems dead there -.-

 

This is the result to touching of bare wires. You should cover it with insulation tape, your problem will be solved.

 

Without looking just no way of knowing why they tied into that circuit .

Really a dumb move from being to lazy to make a proper ground.

This is way more then a simple short from rubbing bare wires !!

This was a Massive current load to ground via wire way to small to carry the load .

You really lucked out that your truck did not catch fire.

 

Hi wyoming9

I have shared my practical experience with you. By the way, share your ideas what is to done in such case.

 

If I had the vehicle in front of me I would be glad to!!

Since I don`t it is pretty hard to do

Saying that LED back up lights and a light bar depending what they are will not draw very much current

I would figure out just what caused this mess and fix the issue .

In this case the melted insulation (bare wires) were the result of the problem not the cause.

Just a guess based on the OP comments something was miss wired .

Did they fail to get the main ground to the block on correct

Was the whole LED light circuit never fused which might have prevented the whole problem

Now the fuel gauge grounds to the left door post with other circuits since electric current always takes the path of least resistance .

For what ever reason the fuel gauge ground circuit carried the current instead of having it take the return path through the body to the battery .

Why there was no circuit protection on the circuit remains a mystery Which would allow full battery wattage to flow if something went wrong.

This is just pure speculation as I can`t see what was really done.