So I'm out for a Sunday drive to the carwash and to do a little on the street tuning and while sitting still smoke starts billowing out of the hood and I can smell plastic burning. I stop the car immediately and open the hood to find this:





My twin power harness had melted clear through and nearly all wires were exposed and fused together with melted plastic. I'm wondering if it melted due to heat? or if the TP actually gave out? Or maybe there was a grounding issue? I can buy a new harness and rewire the leads out of the twin power, but without understanding what caused this problem I'd feel like I didn't actually *fix* anything.

This may be a sign to upgrade to the AEM coils...wasn't planning on doing so right now but I'd rather save for a few months to do something right then half *** it

 

WOW!! Glad you caught it in time before more damage was done.

 

Going to invest in a fire extinguisher and mount for sure after after this regardless of which ignition route I go.

 

Replace the wires. Lets hope you didnt fry it... i have never seen this issue before. Perhaps the wires were stripped and it caused a spark? Or somewhere in the surrounding area ran too hot and melted them?

I lost a car due to steering column dust boot fire. Fire extinguisher is an absolute must with these cars and at hand's reach

 

sorry to hear, I'm curious to what caused it

i have an almost new twin power with harness forsale if interested

 

I have been seeing more and more of those hks boxes go bad. None habe of them have friend however.

 

4 years with mine. Still good as new *knock on wood*

 

Check your ignition harness to the coils. It sees a lot of heat and I wonder if something there shorted first.

 

I will be checking this as soon as I'm home from the holidays. For right now I have simply removed the tp and plugged back in the oem connectors, but I did notice that one of the four of the female holes that recieve the metal tabs was blackened and seemed to have been melted some. Will investigate and take pics next week

 

Finally got home and around to opening up the box to find this...





some of the wires are damaged inside of the box itself, and the plastic clip that attached the tp to the harness is toast on the tp side so the wires. I've decided I'm going to go direct fire...any suggestions as to what a 'damaged and sold as is with cut wires' twin power should be sold for? if anything at all? this will likely be a brick unless picked up by the right person

 

I would not try to repair that box. I looks to be internally damaged.

 

That's a bit scary. An electrical component just failing out of the blue like that is definitely cause for concern......

 

Check your wheel well for worn through wires... Was your steering shaft rubbing on the ignition harness? In 16+ years of building, racing, tuning, and modifying FDs, I have never had or seen an HK$ twin power fail under its own power. I have however seen plenty wiring issues/melting from rubbing through and grounding out.

-J

 

I had a little accident and invested in this right after. Looks great with the right extinguisher.

FD3S: Fire Extinguisher Mount (OEM Seats) - SakeBomb Garage LLC

 

The original coil pack harness was wrapped in fine wire and grounded as a noise interference shield.
Failure of it causes a short that has ruined many ignition amplifiers boxes, harnesses and even engines.
The cable was updated back in the later 90s without a shield.

As far as the TP box, it should be mounted in as cool a spot as can be found.
Mine is mounted on the side rail below the throttle bode elbow. There it is cool and the rail
acts like a heat sink. Been there since about 95 without any problems.

Do it correctly the first time and never have to worry about it again!

 

The steering shaft may have made contact as the twin power was mounted along the firewall behind the ABS harness, which seems typical on there. The lines then ran over the steering shaft over to where they connected to the OEM harness.

Given this information it is possible that my coil pack harness itself failed and caused the short? I was assuming the problem was within the twin power unit or harness as when I eliminated it and plugged in the OEM connections the engine starts like normal.

I won't be repairing the box or using another, just going to go with an all new ignition setup.

 

Check your the body harness running through the driver's side wheel well anyway.

-J