Well, actually it wasn't a fire.  Thank goodness!  But twice I've had electrical wires begin smoking and melting because there was a catostrohic failure somewhere between here and there.  The first time it was on a GPS (automobile kind with cigarette lighter adapter-for use on Lake of the Woods, Ontario to avoid getting hopelessy lost) and second time was on some cable leading to my trolling motor.  Now I'm paranoid with electricity.  Now I keep my electronics and wires as far away from my gas tank as possible.  Anyway, Does anybody else have any similar stories?

nly t/m's that smoke up, but no fire.

I have seen 2 cars cook from car audio installs though.  No circuit breaker at the battery (No, not ,my cars,lol)

I learned as growning up about some light electrical wires (car audio, etc..), no home wiring, but I learned about wiring.  Basically as long as the positives stay to together and negatives stay to together you should be good.  You should have some kind of fuse (fuse box, fuse block, inline fuse) on your positive wires.  If your wires are smoking & melting then a wire may have came lose (fell off terminal, switch, or connection, etc...) and when a positive and negative touch they usually will spark at first, and then start melting the wires and smoking.  That usually happens when you don't have a fuse, because the fuse will usually blow to keep that from happening.  Wiring isn't that hard but it's something you just need to learn a little because if you do it wrong you can mess something up, but if you know enough then when you need to add a something to your boat or car you can.  Like when I got my boat it has a lot of wires and I have been able to clean up some of the areas and make it look nicer, and now if I need to add a acc. (light, 12volt, etc...) I can do it easily.  But I would still try to keep all your wires on the other side from you gas tank.  I think most peoples problems like this is because a wire fell off.

No matter what everyone has that smoke at some point.  My seat broke from the screw to the floor and when I went back I hit the bilge pump switch it knocked a wire off and hit a neg part of another thing, but I quickly moved the wire to keep it from doing anything bad.  

That sound slike to much power. you should install a fuse box or in line fuses. This should help. or bigger gauge wires will handle more amps

I let you know my experiance. it was on a truck woth driving lights. It had 55watt bulbs in it. they burned out and I found 100 watt balbs for the same price as the 55. so I thought what the heck, brighter lights. well after about an hour of running them the wires started smokeing and had to rip the power line off to stop them. I was pulling to many amps.

Many years ago I bought a new boat with a new Evinrude on it.  The riggers failed to tighten the ignition switch in the throttle box correctly.  I launched the boat, hopped in, turned the key and the entire ignition switch turned with the key shorting out to the throttle box case.  The box started smoking.  I was standing there in the boat, extinguisher in hand waiting for the fire.  No fire but it burned up the ignition harness along with blowing a bunch of fuses in the new motor.  That was a short fishing trip.