Monday, i bought a 98 sprinter 5th wheel.
On the way home, my truck had an electrical fire from the trailer and burnt to the ground.

Lucky to get out of it.

65mph. Boom. smoke and bulging hood. I started to the shoulder and realized I had no brakes. Right now, about 12-15 seconds have passed.

3/4 to 1 mile I got it stopped with E-brake and swaying. I couldn't see or breath.
First guy there had called 911 and had some fire extinguishers. It was clearly electrical.
It took 15 minutes-- like hours-- to get fire trucks there. But after 3 minutes it was gone.

I'm still trying to figure out what wires were wrong on the 5th wheel.
Electric brakes worked up to the fire.
running lights too. Brake lights and turn worked but the lefts were dim and the RV place said it would get me home.

Wrong.

 

Wow- sorry to hear about the loss, but glad that you made it out and didn't hit anybody. Good driving in a high stress situation. Will the RV place take any responsibility, if they have any?

 

I'm still working with them.
It is obviously an electrical because the ground wires melted at the trucks brakes too, took out the entire brake light lens and all and the paint is intact next to them.

I'm guessing the left turn wire was grounded or something in that area.
I will from now on ALWAYS add a circuit breaker to the ground wires on both. just in case!
The ground is the only wire not fused.
Such a mess to deal with. Finding a replacement truck and trailer, losses of personal property too.

 

j-fox,
Sorry to hear about this. You definitely had a bad ground between the truck and trailer. And the RV place should have known it before letting you off the lot. Dim lights a dead give away. Your insurance should go to bat for you here, if not, lawyer time.

 

Dang it, man, I'm really sorry. I am glad you are ok. Hope it works out for you.

 

Brake and turn signals are all fused. Don't ever fuse a ground, that's the return path to blow the power fuses.

Likely the RV place ran a hot wire directly from battery to the battery terminal on the 7 way trailer connector. Either no fuse, or very high fuse and small (10 or 12 G wire). Small ground wire, and you have the makings of a fire from any load at all, like the refrigerator, or dead battery in the RV.

Get a lawyer. Sue them for negligence. They almost killed you, and you'll have nightmares for the rest of your life.

On second thought, if you wired the truck, you own both burned units.

 

Bulging hood? So you blew a battery in the process? That's a serious short. Almost sounds like a hot and ground got crossed somewhere.

 

Sorry to hear this man.

What I'm curious about is this:
What exploded under the hood to bulge the hood and cause your truck brakes to fail? Did a battery blow?

Scarry stuff...

 

The batteries were optima's and My best guess is the hydro brake lines popped.
The batteries are still in the bottom of the charred remains.

The bubbling paint was right over the power distribution box.
It happened so quickly it is not clear exactly where under the hood the first explossion was.

Then the hood was buldging front left of center.

Immediately there was smoke everywhere coming from all edges of the hood, into the cab too. There was just enough time to lower the windows a little.

 

I didn't wire anything. Truck has stock wiring to the plug.
Truck had both brake light assemblies melting before the fire got to the back.

 

A friend said he has seen this before.
The fire melted the plastic sensor on the master cylinder to cause the brake failure. Master cylinder melted off and away.
So did the intake air horn. Valve cover melted down around the rockers. Cab, and all the way to the tailgate sheetmetal is warped. Guys it got hot.

The hydro boost lines melting or exploding won't cause the brake failer it had.
It would only cause a hard/heavy pedal. Not a pedal to the floor.

I would guess, from the first pop to serious issues was 3-5 seconds. Engine had quit so no fuel was moving and it never did smell like diesel fuel.
fire chief said " clearly this is an electrical fire not a fuel fire"

 

I didn't wire anything. Truck has stock wiring to the plug.
Truck had both brake light assemblies melting before the fire got to the back.

 

Did the trailer have a battery on board? Could it have back-fed your ground?

 

Yes the trailer had a battery, it looked new.
It was dead.
We drove an hour and stopped to eat.
Stopped at a subway and ate in the trailer Lights worked at that time so the battery did charge. Turned lights off and drove about 30 minute until the fire happened.
I will go take more pictures of the wiring on tuesday. It is 90 miles away.
I did keep the wiring plug--trailer end so I could check it out.
It had electrical tape around it, but is a Barqman? It is a sealed unit, so any errors will be at the trailer end. It burnt into about midway thru its length.

 

As someone who has investigated a good many fires, my best guess would be that something in the trailer was putting a serious draw on the wire feeding the trailer, that wire got hot and eventually melted, most likely in the spot where there was the most resistance, (trailer plug), then in its' melted state shorted directly to ground thru another wire in the harness. This would account for the travel time you had and the time it took to have lunch, all without issues, then all of a sudden a catastrophic failure. My opinion is unless you can find something in the trailer that was creating a large draw of power, the trailer battery trying to charge would be the culprit. Over the period of time you have stated, (1 1/2 hours), the wire feeding the battery just couldn't take the draw anymore.

Another thing that comes to mind is the trailer battery. If it was dead, then you started charging it, it COULD have been deteriorated internally and eventually created a dead short within itself.

It would be interesting if you had been watching your volt gauge to see what it was doing, if anything. A dead short, even small, would have made for at least a very low voltage reading on your gauge.

The one thing I don't understand is why the plastic lenses of your tail lights melted before the fire reached them. It's almost as if there was too much power being fed to them causeing the bulbs to get too hot and melt the lens. But I can't even fathom how much voltage this would take! Certainly more than is created anywhere in a truck.

As for dealer liability... that's a tough one. What was the understanding between you and them? Was it sold 'as is'? No warranty of any kind? Did they KNOW the battery was dead? Had they done ANYTHING to the trailer prior to sale? Was the trailer consigned or repo'd? LOTS of different angles to consider, but as a trailer manufacturer myself, I don't think I'd let any trailer I had sold leave my lot without being checked out first. And if it had a dead battery the new owner didn't want me to replace, I would remove it from the trailer.

Look at the bright side... at least it wasn't an airplane you just bought and were flying home!