2G Tail light wiring melted..

[crash89]

Recently Ive been dealing with a power draw, never really looked into it I just dealt with it and disconnected the battery every night. Then, a few weeks ago my right blinker light would blink fast and friends told me my right brake light was out. I thought, "ok a bulb is out." Finally got out and looked, nope both worked. Hmm wonder why that is.. Well I never looked into it for a while. When I did I found that both lights were good then I saw the wires.. WTF

I found a pretty nasty clump of wires and old electric tape, ok its a 12 year old car Id expect it. BUT, it wasnt like any other loom and nicely wrapped.. Just a bundle of wires and loosely wrapped tape. Peeling it off I started to notice that some wires were melted together and bare wires exposed. Upon taking all of this tape off I noticed that a good two feet of the brake light harness is like this.. WTF

How does this even happen!!!!!

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Thankfully I still had the AWD donor around, I just cut that harness out and am going to splice it in.

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[crash89]

Nobody has an idea how this could have happened??

I got all the new loom spliced in and I feel a lot more safe knowing the car isnt going to catch fire.. I have no idea how it never did the whole 4 years Ive owned it..

 

[wrencher]

Heat from excessive amperage.
Why will be hard to determine without looking @ the car.

Wrong bulbs, other things wired into the circuit, anything that can cause the resistance to be low & the amperage draw high.

Could also have been a problem from long ago that is now gone.
Not the type of thing that can be diagnosed sight unseen

 

[stars]

I would say your clue was that there was old electrical tape already on the wires. Someone has been back there before doing who knows what, but I would suspect that the person did not wrap each exposed wire individually. Since those wires power your brake lights/blinkers, running lights and reverse lights, yes they have a pretty good current draw. This is pretty much what happens when you have a short to ground situation going on. It could be too that two bare power wires touched each other and you have an internal short in the wiring harness. All that old electrical tape is very good for causing a fire or melting due to such high current draws and a short to ground. With a mess such as that I would replace that entire wiring harness. You probably stumbled upon the reason you had to disconnect the battery each day to keep from your battery being discharged.