US investigating 781K Jeeps over underhood fire reports (Wrangler & Gladiator) -- power steering pump electrical connector issue

[nethellum777]

So.....what you're saying is that it's entirely unreasonable to expect a car manufacturer to produce a vehicle that doesn't spontaneously catch fire?? Will insurance bring your family back to life if it burns your house down in the middle of the night????

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[Sweetums]

No, that's why there's an investigation and likely a recall.

"What could have happened" is not what did happen.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

So.....what you're saying is that it's entirely unreasonable to expect a car manufacturer to produce a vehicle that doesn't spontaneously catch fire?? Will insurance bring your family back to life if it burns your house down in the middle of the night????

Don't you have smoke detectors and an escape plan, including fire ladders for 2nd story bedrooms?
We have smoke detectors all connected to each other via wireless.
If we are downstairs and the upstairs one goes off - the downstairs one will yell at us, etc.
My next step is a couple of the same ones in the garage - all connected.

Doesn't matter what vehicle you own, as former safety head for On With Life, I drilled into people - have alarms, have a PLAN, discuss and practice said plan, and if the worst happens, have compact, roll-up ladders under the bed or near a bedroom window and never sleep in a room that has no ways out other than a single door - always have egress windows.

Anyway, we DO NOT KNOW the outcome of this investigation. So far, everything is speculation - which pretty much matches everything ever posted on the internet in general as far as automotive-related forums.
People love speculation and conspiracy. We know that corporations are all evil. Just ask the internet.
My "gut" tells me they may find more than one source, and something that a reasonable person would likely not have foreseen - but again, that's not a fact............

 

[sharpsicle]

So.....what you're saying is that it's entirely unreasonable to expect a car manufacturer to produce a vehicle that doesn't spontaneously catch fire?? Will insurance bring your family back to life if it burns your house down in the middle of the night????

It's not "spontaneous". There's a reason. It's just unknown at this point. It may have nothing to do with the manufacturer.

You should always have things like smoke detectors and evac plans to help protect you and your family. Don't rely on others to plan these things for you, take the initiative and do it yourself. I have, and that's how my family and I survived this:

(And no, I am not blaming BMW for what is being described here as a "spontaneous" engine fire.)

 

[nethellum777]

All "spontaneous" fires have a reason. Of course, I have an escape plan. Many people that are not alive today that died in house fires had all of the proper warnings and escape plans. I'm just saying that the insurance agencies can't always replace everything you would lose in an avoidable fire. The car manufacturers have a responsibility to produce vehicles that don't just catch fire without Arsen being a factor.
So, if the fires are not spontaneous. How would you describe them??? Unintentional combustion due to lack of engendering controls???

 

[ShadowsPapa]

All "spontaneous" fires have a reason. Of course, I have an escape plan. Many people that are not alive today that died in house fires had all of the proper warnings and escape plans. I'm just saying that the insurance agencies can't always replace everything you would lose in an avoidable fire. The car manufacturers have a responsibility to produce vehicles that don't just catch fire without Arsen being a factor.
So, if the fires are not spontaneous. How would you describe them??? Unintentional combustion due to lack of engendering controls???

First, we don't know factually how many fires happened, and of that number, we don't know how many were 100% bone stock, never worked on by anyone, including the owner, for any reason other than perhaps oil changes, tire rotations and so on.
We simply don't know. You may see "xx reported fires" - but there's no real reporting system that says "if there's a fire with a jeep it must be reported to this central database".
And - people can say "no, I never worked on it" - did they swap batteries? Did they add lights of any sort, involving any wiring anywhere?
We don't know.

If there were 6 fires, just for example, it's possible, yes, that something happened that was not foreseen or ever expected. Things can only be tested in so many ways.
I used to work at Compressor Controls Corp - the testing done with their equipment was crazy massive, but sometimes things you can't test for, or where testing shows "this isn't going to happen" - miss.
A vehicle can't be tested using every possible combination of circumstances and drivers, types of use and so on.
I'm not saying they didn't miss something, or that someone didn't allow for a greater safety margin than the bare minimum, but really, again, so far, we are only speculating.
They are looking at the area of the EHPS pump.
The catalytic converters are tucked up in there awfully tight (anyone who has done wiring on these - running wires from the area of the PDC or battery, down and back, or having done other things, have seen and had to work around all of the thermal insulation down there), is there a connector not handling heat as projected?
If so - what is it TOUCHING?
A wire must come in contact with some ground source in order to be problematic. You could take all of the insulation off of your battery cables and be fine - as long as they could never touch anything of opposing polarity.
So if it's a problem with insulation - there also has to be a problem with placement, or anchoring of said cable. It not only has to lose insulation due to heat, scuffing or wear, but it also MUST contact something of opposing polarity to be a problem.
There's a lot of cars and trucks out there running with chewed or bare wires - and they won't have a problem until that bare area touches something it should not.
Investigations like this are hampered by the fact that evidence is destroyed by the fire itself. So what if you see a several strands of bare copper touching something else - was that the chicken or the egg? Is that a cause or result?
Then they have to try to reproduce what they think they have found - maybe it's this connector melting and falling against this part - they have to try to make that happen in testing.
It's going to take quite a bit of time and resources to figure it out.

There are many dozens of wires and cables in vehicles that have full battery voltage at all times. It's only a problem if they are overloaded, or the insulation is compromised AND the wire is allowed to touch "ground" and the fuse or fusible link doesn't give out before enough heat is generated for a fire.

(Does that EHPS pump REALLY require a fuse that large? Does it match the cable size?)

 

[Hootbro]

All "spontaneous" fires have a reason. Of course, I have an escape plan. Many people that are not alive today that died in house fires had all of the proper warnings and escape plans. I'm just saying that the insurance agencies can't always replace everything you would lose in an avoidable fire. The car manufacturers have a responsibility to produce vehicles that don't just catch fire without Arsen being a factor.
So, if the fires are not spontaneous. How would you describe them??? Unintentional combustion due to lack of engendering controls???

That is a bit of supposition trying to fill in holes of not yet known actual root cause facts.

When you build a product in mass, sometimes the Swiss Cheese model of failure line up from time to time that would not normally be there for most.

 

[sharpsicle]

All "spontaneous" fires have a reason. Of course, I have an escape plan. Many people that are not alive today that died in house fires had all of the proper warnings and escape plans. I'm just saying that the insurance agencies can't always replace everything you would lose in an avoidable fire. The car manufacturers have a responsibility to produce vehicles that don't just catch fire without Arsen being a factor.
So, if the fires are not spontaneous. How would you describe them??? Unintentional combustion due to lack of engendering controls???

You may not want to drive a vehicle period if this low of a risk is this concerning to you. Heck, you have a higher chance of being in a serious accident than you do being victim of a fire to the magnitude you're describing.

If there's a correlation to a design flaw, it will be uncovered. But fires happen all the time and they're not a result of poor design, but of other external factors that are beyond almost anyone's control.

The world is not perfect. Your house could "spontaneously" erupt into flames tomorrow because of a rogue arc from old wiring that landed just the right way to start a fire.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

That is a bit of supposition trying to fill in holes of not yet known actual root cause facts.

When you build a product in mass, sometimes the Swiss Cheese model of failure line up from time to time that would not normally be there for most.

Sure wish I had your abilities of concise, direct prose, among other things.

Anyway, your latter point reminded me of when i did beta, and some alfa, testing for Symantec years ago.
They had their scripts you were supposed to follow and give the results of each step or test.
I followed their "rules" of nice orderly testing, but also did what you'd expect of a consumer - even at the business or corporate level customer - I ignored instructions at times. when it said to be sure to uninstall prior versions, do a reboot, and do this or that, I simply installed the product and tried to do what most would. I often succeeded in breaking things in ways they never expected because they assumed everyone would read and follow every instruction, and use it in the same way.
I found a flaw they never realized existed in our mixed environment at PFG - we had Netware and Microsoft mixed networking, and the Netware server drives were actually part of the mainframe. They used a mix of protocols - TCP/IP and IPX/SPX on the network due to the mixed server environment. I found at times product wasn't updating.......... although every instruction had been followed precisely. The server team was baffled. I set up a series of tests using virtual servers in a lab and forced things to break.
I sent all of my info to Symantec, their lead developer asked me for copies of the servers and the configurations so they could duplicate it in their labs.
To shorten it up - they found the flaw, said it could only exist under very specific circumstances, and they contacted other customers with similar mixed networks, found they were experiencing issues as well. They issued a fix and put PFG's company name as the name of the patch.
That was the Swiss Cheese thing for sure - all of the planets had to line up just right on the first blue moon of the year while you stood on one foot, very specific circumstances.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

If there's a correlation to a design flaw, it will be uncovered.

What if the design is ok, but the part supplied to FCA, say a connector, is flawed?
Could be like we ran into at CCC in their Series IV controllers - you HAD to use the TI chip - no other chip would work correctly even if all of the specs were the same on paper. TI couldn't keep up with our demand, so they tried other manufacturers of the exact same chip - and they failed in our brutal testing.

The world is not perfect. Your house could "spontaneously" erupt into flames tomorrow because of a rogue arc from old wiring that landed just the right way to start a fire.

I'm so glad you didn't go all X-Files here with SHC.

Did you know - Fresh pistachio nuts with a high water content tend in particular towards rapid self-heating and may also ignite.

What was the topic again?

 

[Janster]

When you build a product in mass, sometimes the Swiss Cheese model of failure line up from time to time that would not normally be there for most.

Yup… it’s manufacturing ….and even with quality checks along the way, shit can & will happen. I worked in production for 20 years - on a much much smaller scale (Printed catalogs).

Whenever I watch videos of ‘production processes’ (I’ve seen the Gladiator vids) - It’s amazing how the puzzle pieces fit and come together. The amount of machinery that requires proper setup, maintenance & periodic repairs…. That shit doesn’t just happen on its own. There’s a huge staff of mechanics, electricians, engineers, Tech, etc. keeping that shit running smoothly. That doesn’t even include all the parts … Each and every part they’re installing have their own ‘production process’ in some other factory and overseas too!

Today’s vehicles aren’t the same as yesteryear…. What would be a totally reliable vehicle (back in 2000) with the simplest of mechanical parts & components…
Today? HA!! You almost literally have to be a rocket scientist to work on them!!!

 

[ShadowsPapa]

What would be a totally reliable vehicle (back in 2000) with the simplest of mechanical parts & components…

Need to go back farther - I have a big fat book for the 1994 ZJ and the electrical alone is a huge section with page after page of wiring diagrams and schematics. I think the PCM connector alone was something like 50 wires.
I had to figure out each one to get the engine to work in my SX4, and merge the 1982 wiring and technology with the 1994 wiring and technology. Anyone who ends up with that car after I'm gone will be bald after ripping all of their hair out trying to figure out the wiring - unless they also get my sheets of diagrams I made to show what wire ended up in which color and where. Even 1982 was a mass of wiring, control modules and multiple pages of vacuum lines. There's a full page of just the 4x4 vacuum control diagram, not to mention the complex emissions control wiring and vacuum diagrams.

This was the "ECM" that sat behind the right kick panel in the car, and the wiring harness that went out to a multitude of relays, sensors and solenoids, etc. in 1982.
Only a handful of people today could get it figured out. This doesn't even include the electronic ignition module, etc.

 

[Vtur]

Just inspected mine and the connector looks good. For those with big and wider tires, i recommend treat it like a manual steering vehicle, turn the wheels only while moving if possible. It'll helps from putting too much strain on the electric motor.

 

[Janster]

Need to go back farther - I have a big fat book for the 1994 ZJ and the electrical alone is a huge section with page after page of wiring diagrams and schematics. I think the PCM connector alone was something like 50 wires.
I had to figure out each one to get the engine to work in my SX4, and merge the 1982 wiring and technology with the 1994 wiring and technology. Anyone who ends up with that car after I'm gone will be bald after ripping all of their hair out trying to figure out the wiring - unless they also get my sheets of diagrams I made to show what wire ended up in which color and where. Even 1982 was a mass of wiring, control modules and multiple pages of vacuum lines. There's a full page of just the 4x4 vacuum control diagram, not to mention the complex emissions control wiring and vacuum diagrams.

This was the "ECM" that sat behind the right kick panel in the car, and the wiring harness that went out to a multitude of relays, sensors and solenoids, etc. in 1982.
Only a handful of people today could get it figured out. This doesn't even include the electronic ignition module, etc.

Oh I believe it…. as technology grows … products get more complex.

I tell ya…. If I was a kid in high school… (and had the mental capacity for it), I’d get myself into the Automotive industry or engineeering trade. If there isn’t already a demand for Automotive engineers & techs - there certainly will be in the future!

 

[ShariP]

"An Auburn, Washington owner told NHTSA a 2022 Gladiator after just 1,758 miles driven burned while parked next to the owner's house despite not having been driven for about two weeks."

...this is a concern.

That was me. (Play the video muted if you're sensitive about language.)

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