GSXR wiring harness smoke

[cieutag]

I was wondering what is the most amount of smoke anyone has released from a wiring harness. We let out a lot of smoke and blew a couple fuses before getting our harness working.

For those of you who don't know all electronics run on smoke, once you let the smoke out they don't work.

Glad we finally got our engine turning. Looking forward to competition in 07.

[magicweed]

At one point we let out smoke at about 2 cubic feet per minute. Once all was extiguished, we corrected and she started to run right.

Side question. Who subscribes to the "put a bigger fuse in" philosophy? I believe at one point last year we stepped the fuse rating up 4 times, when we kept blowing them. Nothing lit on fire, but I was wondering if this was a common practice while getting it running for the first time.

[Erich Ohlde]

Fuse ratings are generally the max the wire can handle, in other words the fuse is there to protect the wire not the component. This makes sense seeing as how usually the cause of the blown fuse is a slit sheath on a wire that is shorting to ground.

On another note. I worked in a stereo shop for a while and we installed remote starts. One day a co-worker was installing a remotestart/keyless entry into a jesus-chryst-ler van, he finished the install without a hitch but when he hit the start button on the remote smoke poured out into the van filling up the front half. We cleared the smoke out of the van tried it again and the van started right up and we had no idea what caused the smoke. We've seen the customer later and they haven't had any complaints about the install. Just some funny stuff that happens =]

[Chris Boyden]

side question. Who subscribes to the "put a bigger fuse in" philosophy? I believe at one point last year we stepped the fuse rating up 4 times, when we kept blowing them. Nothing lit on fire, but I was wondering if this was a common practice while getting it running for the first time.

Fuses have to be derated for a few things(maybe more): surge currents and temperature. If you have a small load with a high surge....you'll probably pop fuses if you designed for the load. Electric Motors are notorious for surge currents...for some motors, 10 to 1 surge/load currents are not unheard of. Test your load to find out what it really is. You have to know how long the surge lasts to derate the fuse. Fuses can fatigue with repetitive surges...so they sometimes go unexpectedly. Fuses are there to prevent the wires from catching fire.

So, ask yourself what fuses you tend to increase the size on. What surges are happening? are they the fan, fuel pump, electric water pump, starter motor(most don't fuse this). Surges aren't limited to motors...high capacitance loads are essentially dead shorts at start up...People that mess with 1 farad caps for their stereos charge them through resistors before connecting them to batteries.The surge is enough to damage the battery.

[cieutag]

yeah we just had our car kit wiring harness wired wrong. We got it fixed, it wouldn't have been an issue if we got a Diagram. Oh well, we also had to put a head gasket on an 05 GSXR motor with less than 500 miles on it. Talking about bad luck.

Things are on the up and up now but I've been appointed next/new cheif engineer.

[cieutag]

Nevermind. It smokes again....does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? And by fix I mean put more smoke in it.

Side note....Can anyone buy cans of smoke in bulk...I'm thinking of a group buy.

[Sooner_Electrical]

No thoughts on how to put the smoke back in once it is out, If i could do that I would have a Roomba and DVD Player that is still working :-(. We did collect some smoke from the 2001 Car debacle we are selling it at 100$ for 500 CM^3 if you want to make some attempts.

[Gabriel Descamps]

We blew an acid battery once. Acid all over the place: wires, E.C.U., bodyworks, chassis. The E.C.U. never worked again, neither did the starter relay. Wires melted. Like red, green, blue and pink/yellow mac & cheese....

It was quite funny, now that I think of it, it wasn't that funny THEN though...

[Blake_DFSAE]

WE surprisingly only blew one fuse getting out motor to turn over.

And it was because the damn battery was reversed.

[Bryan Hagenauer]

Heh, so here is a story not on an FSAE car, but rather one of the multi-million $ concept cars released this season that my work was contracted to wire up.

The main lights/accessories loom runs down the center console to the 3 batteries in the trunk. The design was such that the seat motor wires are always live with the switch being on the seat (which weren't installed yet) and had somehow missed getting a fuse. One of the interior fabricator guys had taken the red and black loose wires for the seat power, and stripped and twisted them together!?!? The next morning, flip on the power and the place fills with smoke.. Almost friggin burned down the car, just weeks before the car show! It wasn't pretty.