Light Bar electrical (fire) problems

I've got a 5 light bar that the dealer installed a year ago and didn't have any problems. Now this year I've just added some real nice gold inline fuses and within 15 minutes of running the lights the NEG lead got so hot that it burn't up about 1.5 feet of wire. Now mind you I have gold connections and everything is done pro quality. But why wouldn't the fuse pop and burn the NEG side. STUMPED !!!

Lights draw a lot of current. If you do not have a good connection, then you get resistance at the connection. Resistance is bad and will result in heating. Just because the connections are gold, does not mean you have proper crimp/ torque on the connections. If you had to cut strands of wire to get them to fit in the connector, that can cause issues. How many wires are feeding the negative lead? Where are the fuses located in the wiring? Need more install input.

Well...your first guess was right ,I did have to loose a few strands, the fuse is within 1.5'

same thing happened to me

A lot of the "cool" looking inline fuses are all show and very little go. They make them big and shiny so they look nice at a car show but when you really get down to performance they basically suck!

What confuses me is that you said the NEG lead got hot. Did you put the fuse in the negative lead of the wire? It would be better to fuse just the POS side.

Does your lights have one POS and one NEG lead that feeds all the lights? If you have multiple POS leads and just one NEG lead for all the lights then that wire will have a lot more current flowing through it then the others.


Rod

The fuse is on the POS. As it should be. with one POS wire and one NEG wire as is should be. But I have a feeling that it could have been a loose connection. I'll tighten them up again and see if it gets hot again.