68C Battery / Bus Bar Wiring Sizes

[TCUDustoff]

I did something insanely stupid today.  I was ALMOST done putting in my 430W and new audio panel....I was probably 45 min from firing it up to see if it all worked when I accidently hit the master switch.  I had copied the previous installation, just upgraded the gauge of wire, and ran the new wire directly off the battery bus on the copilot side and up to the avionics solenoid without any circuit protection; all of the circuit breakers were downstream of the avionics solenoid. Unfortunately, the battery was connected because I was testing my fuel senders while installing them earlier in the week and forgot to unplug it.  Also, the avionics master switch was on and I had left the battery tender plugged in....oh, and the avionics bus bar was not secured since I was still wiring stuff up and it was out touching the audio panel tray and, well, you can guess what happened.    Smoke, melted insulation, and a fubared wiring harness I spent the last two months making.  

Like an idiot, I ran the avionics bus power wire directly though the adle clamps that I used to bundle my wiring harness and along the Aux Bus bar wiring.  After ripping everything out that I spent the last two days installing, I found the following (pretty sure they are toast): 

Long story short, anybody know what gauge wires these are (-006 and -147)? The parts manual for the 68 and below don't list any specifics and, considering how expensive the larger wires are, I don't wanna have to buy these twice.  Thankfully the only casualty in my wiring harness appears to be the encoder harness... *sigh* 

Also, while you should never be messing with the avionics bus bars while in flight, I am darn sure adding a breaker now for this just like the Aux Bus CB.  Can you imagine if some FOD DID come loose and short out the bus bar while in flight? EEK! And to think the plane was flying around this way for 20 years...

Is there anything else I should be inspecting since I basically just shorted the entire battery bus to ground (I'm lucky I didn't get shocked, now that I think about it...)? I inspected the battery cables and everything LOOKED okay, only the wires that were bundled with the avionics bus wire got visibly burned, but if im ripping all this stuff out might as well do it right. 

[carusoam]

Yikes...

1) people safety first...

2) machine safety second...

3) wallet safety third...

4) A common method to repeat this experience...  see those four wires attached to the shunt? Any tool that falls on bare electric conductors in that area... can drain a lot of electrons to ground...

Now, Lets see if we can get that video working...

upload to YouTube, copy link here...

 

Most important... thanks for sharing your experience.

Best regards,

-a-

[TCUDustoff]

I think I fixed the image.  I just need to use imgur and stop trying to upload / attach directly.  

[carusoam]

That worked.

Thanks for sharing the pic...

Best regards,

-a-