Wiring Smoked From Inside Dashboard. Here's what Happened..

I'd say both problems are related since well, they seem intriguing.

Gasoline will rarely if ever cause any kind of "smoke / fire" symptoms. It has a high vapour pressure to the point of if there was a leak it would evaporate immediately.

Flames under the car, maybe wiring?

Overheat wiring to the starter? There isn't any such wiring in the dash...

But there is such wiring running from the ignition switch out to the engine bay, and if the car doesn't have an auxilliary starter relay it's quite possible to have over-stressed the starter wiring since the solenoid would be getting power directly via the ignition switch and associated wiring.

Craig.

That's exactly what I figured must have happened. I forgot to mention that it is a '89 900. I'll have to look at the wiring diagram to see if there is a starter relay. If there isn't one installed then it was a mistake not to design the car without one. I obviously shouldn't have kept on cranking on it but when your in the heat of the moment you can do foolish things. I've seen people ruin their automatic transmissions trying to free their car from being stuck in the snow. I ruined a clutch once by trying to push my 1/2 ton truck with my Le Car! (the truck's drive shaft fell out at an intersection in front of my house so I panicked)

Well not really - in good condition the starter is never engaged long enough to cause problems. The starters themselves are only rated to run for up to

30 seconds before they need to be turned off to cool down. The current those armatures draw is serious stuff and all that energy gets dissipated into a very small volume of metal.

But I noticed that my c900's all have an auxilliary relay which appears to have been a Saab modification. Interestingly my 1983 8V turbo car (had the engine running yesterday - yay - but there is a strange oil leak which burns from under the exhaust manifold somewhere when the engine is going) does not have an auxilliary relay. Also it still has the old style fuel sender (white plastic case), and the fuel-pump wiring has the old config with the earth for both the pump and sender running off the same terminal on the sender. I think that's one reason the old senders got replaced with the more modern type.

I have not had a problem with any of the starter wiring in the turbo car so far. But when I have been trying to solve engine problems (it had a lot of problems starting when I first got it), I'd always leave it for a minute or two after a long crank both to cool the starter and wiring, but also to allow the battery to recover a bit.

Regards,

Craig.

Relay?

The starter does not draw power through the ignition key!

The relay is directly on top of the starter, or in the starter or whatever. The key only switches the relay on. The power to drive the starter comes from the main positive lead coming directly off the battery.

Relay?

The starter does not draw power through the ignition key!

The relay is directly on top of the starter, or in the starter or whatever. The key only switches the relay on. The power to drive the starter comes from the main positive lead coming directly off the battery.

The wires going to the ignition switch are fairly small. No way close to powering the starter.

No, but if there isn't an auxilliary relay in the circuit that powers the starter motor's solenoid (which itself engages both the drive gear and power direct from the battery to the starter motor proper), the solenoid is powered directly from the ignition switch, and that can overload the wiring if the starter is kept running for a significant time (say more than 20 seconds) and the start attempts get repeated with only short breaks in between.

It might be different in the 9000's but in the 900's the auxilliary relay wasn't a standard fitting in the early production years going on what I've observed in my own cars. Seems to have been a factory modification done later on.

Craig.

I just talked to a Saab mechanic and he said that it was most likely a catalytic converter which got red hot (could be clogged or may have had too much excess fuel dumped in it from other parts not working efficiently) and then started the wiring housed right above it in the console to burn. I was lucky the whole thing didn't go up in flames. I had that happen to a Ford van and it was a pretty traumatic experience even though it was just an old beater. Always have a fire extinguisher in your vehicle at all times. You may even need it to save someone's life. There was a van that rolled over and started on fire by my house early one morning (I used to live next to a highway curve) and if I would have had an extinguisher I could have put the fire out. Luckily no one was trapped inside. The driver was thrown clear of the van and landed on the other side of the road! Mark

Yes, that is a known problem, specially after the heat shield beteen the cat. and the floor is rotted away. But this only happens to the wiring in the console right above the cat, NOT in the dashboard.

?id=8212

Not pretty! Not pretty at all.. What was the result of that in terms of damage to the wiring loom running down the middle?

Craig.

This happened at night so it was hard to see but in all of the excitement the smoke looked like it was coming from inside the dashboard but in reality (as I now know) it was coming from the console up under the dashboard (a good amount of the smoke anyway) and out through the top. When I rewire it I will install some 'asbestos' type material to protect it from happening again.

The smoke was coming from the burning wiring inside the console up through the dashboard out the top making it look like it was coming from something burning inside the dashboard. This happened at night so it was very hard to see where the exact source of the smoke was.

Some of the cables fused together and short circuited, causing fuse #13 to blow and the back up lights and cruise control did not work (this was in an automatic

900, where there's a cruise control cable running to the gear lever)

Read the entire story at

(if your Spanish is any good...)

Now that I've discovered that club's website (!) I've added a new link to it from the links page on my site at:

I'm no good at Spanish though. 8-) I'm assuming the website is the Spanish saab owners club but then again I could be wrong. lol

Regards,

Craig.