Vehicle Fire, Poor Stereo Install

I am a firefighter in California and I do installs on the side. Just wanted to share a incident I went on the other day.

We have a fully involved vehicle fire in a brand new Chrysler 300. The guy had a full systen installed a few days prior to this. It included everything, HU, speakers, 3 subs, 3 amps, cap ect. This "professional" installer only had one fuse at the battery for all amps. I could not read the amperage since it was burned up like the rest of the vehicle, but my guess is it was too large since it did not blow. There was no fuse at anywhere near the amp's and the capacitor terminals were about 1" from the metal body in the trunk. The owner of the car said he heard a arcing sound in the trunk area then smelt smoke. He pulled over and the trunk was fully involved. It quickly spread to the rest of the car.

Thats all, just wanted to share this story. I am in a business were I get to see the end result of poor installs.

Morale's of the story:   Fuses are a installers best friend

You know what is really funny. There is a thread on CarAudio.com right now (that they just banned me for no reason but that is beside the point), that the guy has run no fewer than 4 0 guage lines from his battery with ZERO fuses in it. Then he pronounced the above post as being retarded when I linked to it. So everyone go visit the thread, something about new pics noobx or something like that and point and laugh. I can see them banning me for telling him that that is improper but if it is how they do it .....

Somone go find the thread and link to it.

That is retarded getting banned just because you suggested he install some fuses on that mess he calls wiring.

Then again it could be because you reminded him of the place he grew up and has work so hard to get away from.

http://www.caraudio.com/forum/showthread.php?t=167543&page=4

*EDIT*   I just looked at his profile he's just a 20 and by the looks of it very immature.

As I mentioned above, the guy with the Chrysler said he took it to a professional shop for the work. I thought he was crazy when he told me this because I would think no professional installer would make this simple mistake, but I guess I am the crazy one.

WOW!  Makes me even more grateful there is a place like this where knowledgeable, mature people can discuss car audio without all that.  Unbelievable...

elicoleman, did you notice if this install had a fused distro block?  If it did, then the fusing sounds appropriate to me.  If there's one main power wire it would use only one fuse.  Could be that the fuse didn't blow because the power wire never shorted to ground before the distro block.  Perhaps the electrical system was rendered out of order before the power wire insulation burned off.  The distro fuses would have blown when the cap shorted to chassis.  I'd have to do some CSI stuff on this one to be sure of the reason, but it reasons that the cap discharged into the chassis because of its bad install location, combusted nearby carpeting or something, and... goodbye 300.  Fuses couldn't save the car in this case.

Another good reason to forego the cap.