Toad Fire

[DD788Snipe]

I haven't posted in awhile because we've been busy since we arrived home. We were on I-5 making our way home from Oregon on 9/20. We'd left Medford that morning and headed south. Just about a mile north of Yreka I looked in the mirror and saw a puff of white smoke. My initial thought was I'd lost the turbo coming down the pass but just as I was thinking that I looked in the rear camera and smoke was billowing out of the Colorado's grill. We were a mile from the first exit at Montague Rd. in Yreka and I didn't want to stop on the highway so I made the determination to pull off there and unhook it from the KStar. Two truckers followed us off and grabbed their fire extinguishers and the three of us keep the flames beat back until the Yreka Fire Dept showed up. One of the truckers called 911 for us. Those of you that travel that area know that Yreka RV park is on the east side of the highway. Special thanks to Chief Jerry Lemos and the crew at the Volunteer fire dept for getting there in a timely manner and doing a great job. Our fire extinguishers were empty and the fire was still going. Our one bad spot in all this was Good Sam. I called to get the truck towed and explained the situation, in detail was put on hold for 15 minutes. When the person came back on the phone he said he was trying to find a shop that would fix my truck. So obviously he didn't listen to me in first place and when I pointed out he was wasting my time he said I was too testy and hung up on me. I called back and was told that it would be a courtesy tow. Maybe that's why he hung up on me he didn't want to tell me they really didn't care. All in all they wasted almost an hour of time to tell me they couldn't help me. I will be dropping Good Sam Roadside service at the end of the month. Allstate totaled the truck and was very generous and as you can see in the pictures I've already replaced it.
My best guess is that I had a bad ground connection at the 7 pin plug on the pigtail. The neutral connection blade was pushed back into the adaptor (7 pin to 6 pin) and was barely touching. That causes wires to heat up and I think the diodes broke down and started back feeding the toad's electrical system and poof we have fire. I did have the running lights turned on in the KStar. Nobody got hurt expect our pride and the Motorhome was just fine. The Colorado has been towed over 20,000 miles in the 3 1/2 years we've owned it so who knows for sure what happened and we'll never know. If anyone has any idea please share.
I loved that truck and in some ways miss it but that's life I guess.

[TomandGloria]

Wow, sorry for your loss and the anxiety this caused. You will love the Canyon, my 2015 has been towed behind my previous coach and my current coach with no problems. Enjoy!

[tuffr2]

Thanks for sharing. So a short in the plug caused this? Who would have thought.

Classic example, poop happens.

[allegro1x]

I've also had a bad experience with Good Sam roadside service. Luckily mine wasn't an emergency, but did take all day. Dave

[YC1]

Great story sharing. Thanks. I know that beautiful area well. Nice work truckers.

After having a serious issue with my coach brakes I have been thinking about setting up a way to use my onboard water as a quick fire hose system. I guess keeping a flexible hose connected to the water outlet might work ok. Fire extinguishers are about useless if you only have a small one.

As an electronic tech that owns a telecommunications company that installs all kinds of bellFu and whistles in vehicles I suspect that perhaps a charge line shorted.

Any chance you had a dedicated charge line?

Fuses should have protected you from any problems with the running lights or signal lights.

A bad ground should just reduce the brightness of the lights etc.

An aux toad brake wire could easily be heavy enough to cause an issue. Did you have an aux toad brake?

[Mark D]

on the wire side we ended up doing something different for our towed vehicle. The battery was always going dead on in her trips? By day two battery was completely dead. The 7 pin was sending power but not enough. Not sure if there was a limited etc didn't spend much time on it. It was a 10 gage wire so I am not sure why it didn't burn up if all the juice was being used.

What we did was to get 6 gage wires custom made by powerwerx. They have 50amp Anderson ends and normal tabs on the other side. I connected then directly to the batteries and have a 30 amp breaker that if trips will reset itself. That fixed all our problems. While driving we have a 200 amp alternator to charging everything and at night we leave it connected so the inverter is keeping the batteries well charged.

I think on the plus side the wires are good to 50 amps, good enough to use as a jumper cable but protected to 30 amps.

[tizzyfit]

Sorry about the loss of your truck and the poor customer service from Good Sam.........
The 2 truckers who assisted you deserve a big THANK YOU from all of us RV'ers. Their time and fire extinguishers are valuable assets to them. They can't do anything about the time spent but hopefully your insurance company can reimburse them for the replacement of their used up extinguishers.

[MSHappyCampers]

WOW! Thanks for sharing. Glad the MH wasn't burned and that you got a new truck out of the deal!

[TonyDi]

Wow... sorry about the truck. Luckily it was confined to the toad and didn't spread to the MH.

[aether_one]

Originally Posted by tuffr2

Thanks for sharing. So a short in the plug caused this? Who would have thought.

Classic example, poop happens.

He didn't say he had a short. He said he suspected a poor ground connection, but that would not have caused a fire either.

The fire may have had nothing to do with the truck being a toad. Plenty of cars and trucks have ended up on the side of the road on fire due to any number of reasons.

As far as being "toad caused" I would just want to be sure it wasn't caused by the transmission dropping into gear while being towed/ I understand some small Fords have had that issue; never heard of a GM product doing that.

[DD788Snipe]

I know it didn't drop in to gear.
I did have the ignition in acc and the trans in neutral so the steering wouldn't lock. The manual said to put the trans in park and turn off the ignition but if the steering locked it would have been detrimental and I could see that happening. In hindsight I should have installed a battery switch like is required on the new generation Colorado/Canyons. The fire, from what I could tell, started in the fuse block. So something back fed into the system. I didn't have a charge line hooked up and I had the Air Force 1 toad braking system which uses the coach air system. It does operate the brake light when the system activates but we were descending that steep pass and I use very little wheel brake and rely mostly on the exhaust brake to hold my speed. I did have the running lights on. Like said in my post this truck has been toad over 20,000 miles to that point with nary a problem. Just bad luck I guess.

[DD788Snipe]

On an added note. I have set the new toad up with totally separate running lights that are powered by the Motorhome and even my brake telltale light is powered from the rig. The only electrical connected to the toad battery is the break away switch to the Air Force 1 controller. BTW Demco has bought SMI. SMI is a great company and I hope Demco keeps it that way.

[Dutch Star Don]

Craig.....I did fire investigations for 15 years. Here is some info. First, it's rare that a fire will start with wiring, unless it's a large battery cable. The small wiring just doesn't have the ability to start and maintain a fire. Second, it didn't start in your fuse box. Keep in mind that all fires burn upward. The fire in the engine bay was caused late in the fire. If you look at your wheel wells, you had a fare amount of fire lapping out of the wheel openings onto the fenders. An under hood fire would have toasted the paint and fenders from the inside.

When you check a car fire, you need to look at the lowest point of the fire. I can only see so much in the photos, but there was some good fire in the wheel wells burning up into the engine compartment. An in person examination by a fire investigator would really be needed to determine the issue.

In California, the Highway Patrol does not investigate fires that occur on the freeway, as they believe them all to be accidental. Fires that occur off the freeway are typically investigated by a local fire investigator either working for the fire department or law enforcement, like I did.

Here is one possible theory if you were using the Air Force One system on this truck. The brake away switch is electrically operated. On my truck, the switch started to fail and on a couple of occasions it locked up the brakes when I went to restart the truck and drive away. You may have had an electrical failure at the switch (associated with your umbilical cord wiring) and then brakes were applied coming down the grade. They may have not been applied hard enough to know on a grade, especially the one you were on. The front brakes overheated and started a fire. It would have burned up through the plastic wheel well liner and into the engine compartment. The only question I would have.....was there fire coming out of the wheel wells early on?

Lastly, I also tow the GMC Canyon and love it.