A few days ago the cables burned through insulation and hit each other, sparking. Thankfully, although I was out in the woods when that happened, I was able to bungee the wires apart from each other (what a stupid design!? Negative and positive main battery cables in the same loom).

Today I went and re covered them in electrical tape.

A few questions.

What could have caused them to melt off the insulation? A good 10 inch segment of both cables was melted.

The positive was hit harder... A few of the strands were frayed by the sparks. Question here is, will this cause any issues? The jeep still starts and performs.

ANyone had this happen to them?

 

Had something similar happen to a chevy I used to own turned out to be cracked battery plates that caused it.

 

1) Excess heat in the conductor. Could be any of a number of causes (excess conductor resistance, excess contact resistance, battery defect, ...)

2) I wouldn't consider electrical tape a long-term solution. If nothing else, I'd run a couple of layers of heat shrink - at least. Tape wrap has too many potential openings, which can result in contamination, and which can cause electrical leakage. Oops! Recover with at least two layers of heat shrink, or replace outright.

No, I don't know why they put both cables in the same loom - I also think that's a dumb idea. High-current mains cables should be separated with some sort of barrier layer - at least, that's how I design it.

The frayed strands can cause some small headache - since you're effectively losing conductor cross-sectional area in that section, which reduces the size of the conductor (it's probably gone from 6AWG to about 8AWG for that few inches - which effectively makes the whole conductor 8AWG - but that's going to make it get hotter...)

 

You have an '88...are they the original cables? I'd just replace them. It's time and engine fires suck.