Discovered a smoked ground cable 2013 Tacoma

I need some of my fellow tacoma world advice. When I was changing the UCA's in my truck my buddy discovered that the ground wire coming from the alternator had melted off its plastic sheathing from the wire. what would make this happen? I do have a winch and a few off road lights and a sub amp that are connected to the battery. Could this be the reason or could it be a factory defect?

 

Not a factory defect.
You modified the truck.
Running all the amps from your winch, etc, overloaded that ground circuit.
Was not designed for that sustained amperage.
Your going to need to redesign the grounds.

 

I agree with Tacoma Mike . Time to add a few more ground straps and some additional ground points . I would be looking at your amperage draw and compare to what the factory altenator is designed for .

 

You are going to be lucky if that didn't burn up some other wires in that harness.

 

How do I go about fixing this? Is it as simple as the "big 3" upgrade and replacing the ground wire with a better quality bigger gauge?

 

First thing you need to do is stop using anything you put on.
Then you need to have the harness stripped and examined and then repaired.
We don't know how you ran your cables but hi amps and resistance caused the ground to run through the body of the truck.
You need to run bigger cables and then run direct to the battery. Anything you ran hi amps with needs to ground direct to the battery.
Also,moderation with the winch on time.
There area lots of threads on here with installs on all your accessories.
But anytime you see what you have it's the circuit chasing a ground because its not happy.
BTW. I have seen ecu's get fried because of stuff like this. Get it repaired right before you start doing that. It won't be covered under warrante

 

+1

 

IMHO, you are very lucky that it did not start a fire. Insurance adjusters live for large after market electrical loads with undersized wiring or no fusing so they can easily disallow a claim. A healthy Group 24F battery, depending on the temperature and State-of-Charge, can produce up to 2000 amps until it self destructs from the heat. OEM wiring is sized for approximately 120% of the worse case electrical load over each circuit.