Prius Caught on Fire

i phones, they're on priuschat.

 

Fixed it for you. Did you have dielectric grease on the prongs?

Actually, does anyone on here have their block heater plug covered in dielectric grease? If not, you may want to take a scotchbrite pad to it to clean up any corrosion and give it a good sloppy coating of dielectric grease found at any parts store.

 

Excellent point, SOP on all things electrical here.

 

Is dielectric grease good on cord connections? I'm not automatically disputing it, just wondering. I've used thin application of dielectric grease on the prongs, and have vague recollection the extension cord started heating up, blackening the contacts at end.

Not completely sure on this. Maybe clean connection best bet?

 

The clean connection is what you want, but it will corrode quickly. So either keep a scotch brite pad handy to clean the connection every time or apply dielectric grease to protect it. Dielectric is going to keep moisture out from corroding your terminals, but it's not conductive so it won't cause an arc, it also does not break down due to any heat that may build up. The contact pressure should be enough to penetrate the grease making for a solid connection. If you were experiencing heat build up my first guess is you don't have a positive connection for some reason. Old extension cord, misaligned prongs, or way too much dielectric that it could not make a solid connection through contact pressure are my first guesses.

Maybe there is a better product out there that I'm not aware of. I know audiophiles use some kind electrical contact grease that ensure a positive electrical connection while preventing corrosion, however I don't know how it would hold up to sitting out in the elements getting moisture, salt, magchloride and who knows what else on it. Also if you put a large blob of electrical contact grease across both terminals, or the grease heats up and flows in a way that the grease touches ground you've just shorted your circuit.

 

Thanks for the explanation. Yeah, I just turfed that extension cord, no problems since. Our car's garage stored, nice and dry; that might help too.

 

It was outside, or in garage?

 

Both! According to OP it was in a detached garage.

 

Did you ever get the report? If it really was "the first couple of feet of the block heater cord from the connection point at the grille into the engine bay", I really wonder what would cause that. About the only thing that makes sense is that maybe the block heater cord wasn't installed properly, and got pinched a couple of feet into the car, which generated a low-resistance, but not-completely-short circuit, short enough to heat up the block heater cordset (which is rated for 10A on my brand-new block heater - probably AWG 18), but not short enough to trip the breaker. A 6.5 ohm "short", for example, would allow 18.5A to flow, which would be OK for the CB (probably 20A), the extension cord (12AWG is good for 25A), and the timer, but not so OK for the EBH cordset.

I'm about to install a heater (Toyota p/n PU140-00913, now the same p/n for all Toyota models and years), and wonder if I should think twice. (My garage isn't detached .)

After thinking twice, I see my EBH measures 35.3 ohms, consistent with the "400W 115VAC" cast into the heater itself. I think I will make up a "special" extension cord for the EBH with an in-line 5A fuse, just in case. I will also, just for fun, run 18.5A through a piece of 18AWG zip cord and see how hot it gets. Finally, I was going to install it myself, but should I have the dealer do it (to offload the liability for a bad install), or not (to make sure it's done right)?

 

My situation in past: I'll forget to unplug, BH cord gets pulled out a bit (unnoticed) and drags on the road, abrading the plug prongs. Repair by cutting off the plug and splice/solder in another, cut off a short extension cord.

If the splicing of the three wires isn't sufficiently staggered, or poorly connected, or poorly insulated, there could be problems. Maybe something like that happened.

 

Remember the Gen 4 has active grill shutters. I hope they did not damage the cord.
There was another user who had to reroute the dealer installed EBH cord to avoid the shutters.

 

The OP was the one that rerouted the cable. He found it due to a shutter error. Perhaps the cable got damaged before it was rerouted.
See Grille Shutter Inoperative and Check Engine | PriusChat

 

That would point to dealer installation or port installation error.

 

So what are you doing for a car now then? Did insurance pay you out and you're going car shopping or are you just riding that sweet sweet Triumph around in the Alaskan winter. That displacement bump to 765cc makes me want to run out and buy a new Street Triple....

 

ohh wow, So whats gonna happen to the car ? that sucks


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