[Denny and Angie Miller]

While lowering my pin box I inadvertently pinched the break away switch wires with the bolts holding the pin box. I didn’t know this happened until several minutes later when smoke began emitting from the pin box and the battery compartment. Initially I didn’t know where the problem was and frantically began cutting wires that were melting in the battery compartment. Due to no fuse, the self-resetting circuit breaker kept resetting to the point the wire from the battery compartment all the way to the pin box overheated and melted all the insulation off. Since that wire is grouped and routed with many other wires (turn, brakes, stop, +12V) the hot wire melted into several other wires ruining most of the harness requiring a complete replacement from the pin box all the way to the battery compartment. Not a fun job as pulling new wire was complicated by the melted mess. I finally had to cut a hole in the closet floor to finish the job, which took about 12 hours. Initially I had intended to not reconnect the break away switch, but am now leaning towards reconnecting it through a 30-amp fuse as my factory brake controller uses a 30-amp fuse. That should be sufficient to prevent a fire.
What have you done differently? Any other suggestions?