Close call with fire on my bike!!

[Jeff S]

I've switched entirely to Lithium Ion batteries. Yes, folks have a different set of safely concerns with these, but never needing an external charger is good peace of mind.

 

[MidlifeCrisis]

After I removed the rest of the wiring, I checked the fuse. This is the kind of thing I would have expected the fuse to prevent. It turns out that it is a 15 amp fuse!! I have no idea why they would put a 15 amp fuse in a pigtail that is typically used with 2 amp trickle chargers! At first I thought maybe the dealer that installed it just put in a fuse that was too large, but the fuse cover actually has "15 amp" molded into the plastic. The plastic cover on the fuse has black marks on each side from the heat, but the fuse itself never blew.

That pigtail probably came with a much lower amp fuse. My guess is that at some point, that fuse blew and somebody didn't have that amp rating fuse and just stuck a 15 amp in there. The fuse holder may have a 15Amp rating on it, but that's just the fuse holder itself. You should never go by the rating of the fuse holder, which is just an OEM part the mfr of that device purchased to manufacture to assemble that device. I buy fuse holders in bulk for various projects I do with cars and bikes. I put in fuses that are suitable to each installation, not the max rating of the fuseholder.

At a minimum, you should never install a fuse that is greater than the ampacity of the conductor. If anything, you should derate the fuse to protect the wiring. I highly doubt that pigtail has 14AWG or larger. Since that pigtail has some electronics on it, it should be rated to what the integral electronics can handle, likely far lower.

 

[Tourmeister]

By the way, I don't know if everyone caught the fact that this pig tail did NOT have a charger plugged into it at the time it caught fire. The only current that would normally have been going to it would be whatever the LEDs draw.

As for the 15A fuse, I did not put it in there, and it never even occurred to me that someone would put that big of a fuse in something like a trickle charger pig tail I'll certainly be checking that kind of thing in the future!

I still can't believe how lucky I got by being there when it happened

 

[dukey33]

Good practice to remove electrical accessories and wiring that is unused. I know aircraft repairs will sometimes abandon wiring in-place but may be removed later during upgrade modifications.
Glad you were present to catch this incident.

 

[Crew Chief]

By the way, I don't know if everyone caught the fact that this pig tail did NOT have a charger plugged into it at the time it caught fire. The only current that would normally have been going to it would be whatever the LEDs draw.

Yup, it doesn't take much to create a short. Many shorts will pass just enough current to cause heat, but not enough to trigger the protection. That could happen without the electronics too, if the wires were to have a small chaff or some such, but it's not as common.