bad ground causes short?

[Lucid115]

i recently installed a led light kit into my car interior and after turning it on, it worked for about 5 seconds before smoking, so i took it all back out of the car, installed it on a 12v computer power supply and everything worked fine, the only differences between the two setups are, one was grounded near the fusebox to a spot i grounded my multimeter to while testing for voltages at fuses. the other setup, was grounded right to the power supply. is it possible that a bad ground caused it to smoke?

 

[Lucien Nunes]

No, a bad (high resistance) ground connection will simply stop it working or make it dim or flicker. What probably happened was that the hot wire of the lighting was in contact with the car body. The resistance was high enough not to blow the fuse, but much too high a current was flowing. When removed from the car, this short was cleared and it worked correctly.

 

[rsgaz]

the only differences between the two setups

The PC power supply will output a very accurate and consistent 12vDC. A car battery could easily read 13.5v(engine off) or even up to 15v with the engine running.

Was it specifically a 'car LED kit'? i.e. it has a wider input voltage between, say, 11v and 18v?

 

[Lucid115]

The PC power supply will output a very accurate and consistent 12vDC. A car battery could easily read 13.5v(engine off) or even up to 15v with the engine running.

Was it specifically a 'car LED kit'? i.e. it has a wider input voltage between, say, 11v and 18v?

Yes. Was made for cars, and I guess what was said makes sense because before the lights were actually on and working it was just a red light but I drove for about half an hour with no smoke. Then as soon as I turned on the lights it smoked. Kinda odd

 

[telectrix]

you got cars in Canada????? thought you had dog sleds and snowmobiles.