Thread: Car almost caught fire yesterday...

I have my BMW interfaced with an I-BUS controller so that I could send steering wheel commands through my computer.....

I'm driving home from work and I realize that my steering wheel controls aren't working for my carputer. After messing around with the control panel, I realize that the computer isn't detecting it, which means that it was probably unplugged. So, I stop for gas and check out the connecter in the trunk....surely, its unplugged. I plug it back in real fast and jump back in my car.

After a few seconds smoke starts filling my car. It starts off with just the smell of burnt metal and rubber, and within a minute there is a thick cloud of smoke surrounding me. I roll down the windows and look in between my seat and the center console and I can see an orange flickering glow...FIRE! I pull over and pull the computer out from under my seat (thank god I didn't end up bolting it down) and I could see that the flame is on one of the prongs of the serial plug that connects to the computer from the i-bus controller.

I blow out the flame (which is only the size of a candle flame...nothing else got damaged), disconnect the serial cable, and slide the computer back in. I open my trunk and there is a similar burnt smell. I check the connector on the i-bus and the entire serial cable is fried. I check the pins on the cd changer harness, and it turns out that I connected the cable wrong....I was sending 12V through the ground lead everytime I pressed a steering wheel button.

It turns out that every button press was sending a spark through the serial cable and I remember pressing the buttons repeatedly in frustration while trying to get it to work....its good that nothing else happened, but just a warning to anybody who is using the i-bus.....make sure you connect the pins correctly...