Sad indeed......the story of the great Bonneville fire of '04.

On Thursday of last week, I decided to put my system in temporarily. It consisted of a Rockford Fosgate Power HX2 15" and a RF Power BD 1000.1 amp. So obviously, I was running a good bit of power. I liked that the battery was under the back seat, because I only needed like 6 feet of power wire, but something always bothered me about it being there.

So since I was in a hurry to put it in, I used the power wire the same way it was set up in my last car. This posed a problem for placement of the 100 amp circuit breaker. So I just set it on top of some insulation and electrical taped both of the connections. (except for a spot about 4 mm in diameter) I didn't think it would matter, because it was sitting on insulation and had no access to ground, so I decided that later I'd put the breaker somewhere else safer. The seat, when in place, was sitting right on top of the circuit breaker.

So me and my girlfriend and a couple we're friends with went to a restaurant called O'Charley'* to eat. Somehow, we made it all the way over to the restaurant just fine. But when we left, we got in the car and smelled something strange. We knew it was electrical smoke, so I thought "MY AMP IS ON FIRE!". We all jumped out of the car in a bolt and I ran and yanked the power wire from my amp.....but that wasn't the problem. We kinda ambled around the car for a minute and then saw some smoke start coming up from under the seat, and in the following two seconds, smoke started billowing from it. We yanked up the back seat, and the foam and the plastic covering for the factory wires, and the circuit breaker were all flaming. So right there in the parking lot, we stomped it all out and checked out the damage.

My friend'* girlfriend had sat down in a way that it wedged the circuit breaker between the plastic and the insulation, and grounded it out, making lots of sparks that caught the foam under the seat on fire. The plastic covering for the factory wires had melted apart, and it looked like all the factory wiring was gone. Part of the fuse box melted, the circuit breaker and the power wire on the battery side had melted from the fire, and the main power wire from the battery to the fuse box had gotten so hot that it melted the insulation off of it. All the foam on the bottom of the seat within the shape of two giant footprints was melted through, barely getting the bottom of the leather on the seat bottom. There was smoke damage about 6 inches up the bottom of the seat back where it had smoked in the beginning. Most of the painted areas in about a 2 foot square were black, some of it burned through, and the little bit of carpet and insulation under the seat was burnt or melted.

Luckily, a friend'* parents happened to be eating there that night and lent me some tools to unhook the battery and I had to get it towed back to my house. Thank God for GM Certified Used Vehicles....the tow was completely free.

The next three days have been spent fixing it. I replaced the main power wire, cut a bunch of carpet and insulation, cleaned up some wiring and sanded and repainted the burnt surfaces. The smoke damage cleaned off, and the only real losses were the seat bottom, which I'm only gonna replace because it'll smell, and the circuit breaker. Turns out it didn't hurt a bit of the factory wiring, and really didn't hurt much cosmetically. Actually, once I replace the seat, it'll pretty much look like it never happened, exept for the lack of some carpet and part of the factory wire cover. But, if you've never had a fire in your car, let me tell you, it'* a bitch.

I've been trying to get a unique name for my car, and I'm definitely considering "The Burneville."

But in case you're wondering about the poll....since the fire, I'm kinda considering not going for the loudest system, but more for the most technologically advanced car. Either way, I'll have the Eclipse commander voice control for the radio and windows. But its kind of a choice between keeping the very loud single sub, or getting two much smaller ones with a left and right channel, remote start, underbody kit, radar detector, and maybe a G-Comp performance meter. Let me know what y'all prefer.

Double post. Locked.