There I was, doing a maintenance thing on the car. One of my instruments wasn't working correctly and needed to be rewired. I had hit the quick disconnects for the high voltage battery pack and also disconnected the DC to DC Converter from the main pack. By accident the 12V source going into the instrument fell out and sparked, my thought is "Dog gone it, now I'll have to replace the fuse.." But it didn't stop sparking, oh no, it started on fire, then the wires got so hot they started to melt the plastic....I frantically looked for my fire extinguisher...then realized I didn't disconnect the 12V battery and the wire was coming straight from the battery without a fuse. Quickly I grabbed the wire cutters and clipped the wires from the 12V battery. It stopped the fire but in the process, my three car garage was filled with smoke and now there was some charred wires that needed to be replaced.
Lesson learned....always put a fuse in any line that goes anywhere. Disconnect the 12V battery as well, not just the DC to DC.
In addition to the line in question getting fried, it also took out two other wires in the process. Probably 4 hours later, I had it fixed. A little extra thought would have prevented this.
Yes, I'm embarrassed but maybe this will help someone else NOT go through this experience.
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