I offered to help my boss tow his wife's race trailer while he was gone. I hooked up the trailer and plugged in the harness into the 7 pin round connector. I started checking out the lights and noticed a smell near the truck. I could not find anything until I opened the hood and found smoke pouring out near the ECM/ABS controller. I promptly disconnected the trailer harness and all appears to be well.
I normally tow my trailer and have had no problems.
Does anyone know what was smoking and or how to find out. The trailer harness melted most of the way through, but the wires on my truck appear not to have melted.
Why did the TPIM not shut off the connection. Which is obviously a short of some kind.
Later inspection revealed that the trailer has a battery on it to run the winch, one wire going to the harness is used to charge this battery. This was the wire that melted the insulation on the trailer side.
I have had no problems since. Everything works, trailer lights work ok on my trailer.
What can I do to see if something needs to be looked at so I dont get stuck on the side of road somewhere?

 

Bump! Bump!

 

All I know is that releasing the magic smoke from any electronic box is a bad thing.
Whatever burned up will become apparent at the worst possible time.

I would be looking at the aux wire from your connector (center)to the power center and the hot wire (#4) to the power center.

http://www.etrailer.com/faq_wiring.aspx

 

Either that or the winch wire had a very large draw on it for some reason, (stuck winch switch?), and the wire/connection in your truck that feeds that pin on his trailer wasn't big enough to handle the load. A big draw will melt small connections and wires that weren't made to handle that much load and NOT trip any breakers or blow any fuses.

chaikwa.