Electrical smoke filling the cabin!?

picklenick

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So I was on the interstate on my way home from work. I smelled an odd burning smell like cap gun smoke if you've ever smelled that. I thought it was the semi i was passing because it went away after a minute or so. I got off the interstate. Cruisin through the backstreets. I start smelling it again but stronger. Then i get a TPMS system malfunction. Shortly after that I got the everything isn't working series of warnings. TSC, ABS, emissions, power steering (which I lost), auto braking, parking brake, hillstart assist, all that crap. The car still smelt like fire so i thought o shit. All this is happening literally as I'm pulling into my apartment. When I opened the door the dome light came on and I could see a thick layer of white smoke blanketing the entire headliner! I grabbed the fire extinguisher I keep behind the drivers seat and popped the hood. I went over the entire engine bay with a flashlight and nothing no smoke, no smell. wtf. I went back and tried to find out what let the smoke out. I cant for the life of me figure out where it came from. I looked under the dash, under the seats, in the trunk. I felt every wire and plastic box I could reach and it was all cool to the touch. It has to be something electrical Honda buried somewhere. The only things i used on my drive were windshield defrost (65 degrees, sync enabled), Drivers heated seat (set to medium), the stereo was on briefly around the middle of the drive (bluetooth, volume on 10) outside temperature is 7 degrees (F) This is the first really cold day we've had this winter that's really the only possible catalyst i can see. I read a couple complaints people posted about rodents chewing wires and also other Honda models having battery fires because of salt water permeating the seal on the battery monitor. I will say that literally when I was driving the car home from the dealership I realized that the windshield washer didn't work. Long story short a mouse chewed the washer hose and it was pissing washer fluid down the firewall... So maybe my car does have a chewed wire... But where the actual f*** could it be there's about 5 miles of extra wire in this car that it doesn't even need to run and be a car... If anyone has any insight or similar experience I'd love to hear about it. I'm not sure what to do about this It literally just happened. I need to sleep on this. Part of me hopes it happens again and then i find the problem and fix it myself. Part of me wants to take off my CAI and reflash to stock (only 2 mods on the car thankfully i haven't installed my full exhaust yet) and wait and see if the car burns down...
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jred721

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If a mouse chewed through the washer hose, I can almost guarantee that the mouse chewed through other stuff and it only just now became an issue. Obviously I can't say exactly what the mouse chewed through, but i'm willing to bet that it's the culprit of all of this. DO NOT drive the car anymore though, get it towed ASAP to the dealer and explain to them exactly what happened and they'll take care of it. Driving that car is a safety issue probably.
 
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picklenick

picklenick

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That's what I'm thinking. I really wanna find the problem before I go to a dealer because I know how they are. I've had the car more than a year so I'm probably SOL for lemon claims if the dealer doesn't find anything and the car catches fire and isn't totaled. I forgot to mention when I shut the car off and restarted it nothing smoked. most of the errors went away except the check engine light. So I used my scanner and got 2 codes. U0029 (Vehicle communication bus A performance) and U0155 (Lost communication with instrument panel cluster IPC control module) I'm gonna read on these and see if I can find where "Bus A" and the "IPC control module" live...
 

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That's what I'm thinking. I really wanna find the problem before I go to a dealer because I know how they are. I've had the car more than a year so I'm probably SOL for lemon claims if the dealer doesn't find anything and the car catches fire and isn't totaled. I forgot to mention when I shut the car off and restarted it nothing smoked. most of the errors went away except the check engine light. So I used my scanner and got 2 codes. U0029 (Vehicle communication bus A performance) and U0155 (Lost communication with instrument panel cluster IPC control module) I'm gonna read on these and see if I can find where "Bus A" and the "IPC control module" live...
Good luck. Just remember though with electrical issues, its not straightforward like mechanical issues and there are often many underlying things that cause issues, so even though the CEL is saying those things are faulty, there could be more that's wrong. You could always take it to a trusted mechanic if you have one so they can take a look around. Also if the mouse chewed on something, I would start by looking around and see if you can find any visible damage.
 
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picklenick

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Sometimes I think if I was any dumber....

After spending an hour breaking my neck looking for burnt wires and metering a dead short on both high and low canbus to ground I thought well the car runs fine maybe the KTuner can tell me something...
Then my dumb ass reached for the cable end laying in the passenger floorboard and low and behold I find this...:doh:
Someone rode in my car the other day and had snow on thier feet. I can't even begin to describe how relieved I was to find this.
With this unplugged everything is back to normal the CEL even went away on its own.
Honda Civic 10th gen Electrical smoke filling the cabin!? Burnt Cable
 


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Sometimes I think if I was any dumber....

After spending an hour breaking my neck looking for burnt wires and metering a dead short on both high and low canbus to ground I thought well the car runs fine maybe the KTuner can tell me something...
Then my dumb ass reached for the cable end laying in the passenger floorboard and low and behold I find this...:doh:
Someone rode in my car the other day and had snow on thier feet. I can't even begin to describe how relieved I was to find this.
With this unplugged everything is back to normal the CEL even went away on its own.
Burnt Cable.jpg
Wow! Is that the cable for the KTuner? Where does it get power from? Seems like it would be under fuse protection.
 

jred721

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Sometimes I think if I was any dumber....

After spending an hour breaking my neck looking for burnt wires and metering a dead short on both high and low canbus to ground I thought well the car runs fine maybe the KTuner can tell me something...
Then my dumb ass reached for the cable end laying in the passenger floorboard and low and behold I find this...:doh:
Someone rode in my car the other day and had snow on thier feet. I can't even begin to describe how relieved I was to find this.
With this unplugged everything is back to normal the CEL even went away on its own.
Burnt Cable.jpg
Wait so if I got this right, the KTuner was plugged into your OBD II port with the micro usb cable also connected to it, and someone got snow in the micro usb cable which caused the unit to go crazy and feed all that stuff into your car? If unplugging the cable solved the problem then great, but that seems almost crazy that some snow made the whole unit go whack like that :dunno:.
 
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picklenick

picklenick

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Wow! Is that the cable for the KTuner? Where does it get power from? Seems like it would be under fuse protection.
Yea. It gets power from the constant +12v pin of the OBD 2 port. Yea you would think a fuse would pop. Only thing I can figure is the metal tabs in the plug end of the ktuner cable are so small they acted like a light bulb filament or maybe a vape coil is more acurate. Not drawing very much current but enough to make one or two of the tiny pins red hot.
 
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picklenick

picklenick

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Wait so if I got this right, the KTuner was plugged into your OBD II port with the micro usb cable also connected to it, and someone got snow in the micro usb cable which caused the unit to go crazy and feed all that stuff into your car? If unplugging the cable solved the problem then great, but that seems almost crazy that some snow made the whole unit go whack like that :dunno:.
Not the whole Ktuner just the OBD 2 to mini OBD 2 or whatever the proper name for it is. No USBs involved. I never once thought about the constant 12v power on the OBD 2 port. It looks like the water and probably some road salt mixed with the 12v power oxidized the pins and metal body of the connector extremely fast. Steel and copper in slightly salty water is a perfect recipie for electrolysis. Once those oxides bridged the gap between the 12v pin and the metal body of the connector (ground) it started heating up. More and more pins short out and then once it hit the can bus pins it dissipated all the signals being sent by the sensors in the car. Or at least that's the best I can come up with after trying to crash course myself on canbus troubleshooting over the last 24hrs lol.
 

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Sometimes I think if I was any dumber....


Then my dumb ass reached for the cable end laying in the passenger floorboard and low and behold I find this...:doh:
Someone rode in my car the other day and had snow on thier feet. I can't even begin to describe how relieved I was to find this.
With this unplugged everything is back to normal the CEL even went away on its own.
]

Never run a cable where you or somebody can put their feet on or can walk on.
You may sure one day this will happen.
 

10thDave

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So I was on the interstate on my way home from work. I smelled an odd burning smell like cap gun smoke if you've ever smelled that. I thought it was the semi i was passing because it went away after a minute or so. I got off the interstate. Cruisin through the backstreets. I start smelling it again but stronger. Then i get a TPMS system malfunction. Shortly after that I got the everything isn't working series of warnings. TSC, ABS, emissions, power steering (which I lost), auto braking, parking brake, hillstart assist, all that crap. The car still smelt like fire so i thought o shit. All this is happening literally as I'm pulling into my apartment. When I opened the door the dome light came on and I could see a thick layer of white smoke blanketing the entire headliner! I grabbed the fire extinguisher I keep behind the drivers seat and popped the hood. I went over the entire engine bay with a flashlight and nothing no smoke, no smell. wtf. I went back and tried to find out what let the smoke out. I cant for the life of me figure out where it came from. I looked under the dash, under the seats, in the trunk. I felt every wire and plastic box I could reach and it was all cool to the touch. It has to be something electrical Honda buried somewhere. The only things i used on my drive were windshield defrost (65 degrees, sync enabled), Drivers heated seat (set to medium), the stereo was on briefly around the middle of the drive (bluetooth, volume on 10) outside temperature is 7 degrees (F) This is the first really cold day we've had this winter that's really the only possible catalyst i can see. I read a couple complaints people posted about rodents chewing wires and also other Honda models having battery fires because of salt water permeating the seal on the battery monitor. I will say that literally when I was driving the car home from the dealership I realized that the windshield washer didn't work. Long story short a mouse chewed the washer hose and it was pissing washer fluid down the firewall... So maybe my car does have a chewed wire... But where the actual f*** could it be there's about 5 miles of extra wire in this car that it doesn't even need to run and be a car... If anyone has any insight or similar experience I'd love to hear about it. I'm not sure what to do about this It literally just happened. I need to sleep on this. Part of me hopes it happens again and then i find the problem and fix it myself. Part of me wants to take off my CAI and reflash to stock (only 2 mods on the car thankfully i haven't installed my full exhaust yet) and wait and see if the car burns down...
So it was the OBD -> USB cable (I assume USB) for the KTuner V2 all along?

I get these burning smells once in awhile, even after going back to a stock tune and selling the KTuner V2. I've come to the conclusion that it was all road work and I would get this smell every once in awhile when an older car pulled in front of me which what I assumed was a car that recently had a catalytic converter replaced and it's still new / being broken in.
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