I've had past clients partially burn their cars after chaging a light bulb. Keys off the ignitio and all. I talk out of experience. I've owned 3 repair shops. Seen worse things happen.
Was this _just_ a bulb replacement? Or was bulb replacement the last action is a chain of errors? I'm pretty sure I've never worked on a car that didn't have suitable fuses for light bulb circuits/wiring.
(Having said that, I have been personally responsible for screwing that up - "130W headlight globes, Sure! I'll just swap out the 15A headlight fuse for a 30A one! This wiring looks _fine…_" (So far as I know) I always got away with that, perhaps more out of luck and good engineering by the manufacturer, rather than having sufficient expertise to be able to make a correctly informed decision about whether the OEM loom was good for double the original current…)
Perhaps modern cars are build with significantly less margin-for-error than my experience dictates? My car-tweaking experience was mostly on late '60s / early '70s Volkswagon Beetles, and mid '70s Ford Escorts. I haven't owned a car since '95 (and the last one was a '72 SuperBug). I've been pretty much motorcycle-only since then.
One of them was an electrical engineer believe it or not. He partially burned the wiring on his 911 Porsche when replacing a lightbulb. Its just crazy.
(Having said that, I have been personally responsible for screwing that up - "130W headlight globes, Sure! I'll just swap out the 15A headlight fuse for a 30A one! This wiring looks _fine…_" (So far as I know) I always got away with that, perhaps more out of luck and good engineering by the manufacturer, rather than having sufficient expertise to be able to make a correctly informed decision about whether the OEM loom was good for double the original current…)
Perhaps modern cars are build with significantly less margin-for-error than my experience dictates? My car-tweaking experience was mostly on late '60s / early '70s Volkswagon Beetles, and mid '70s Ford Escorts. I haven't owned a car since '95 (and the last one was a '72 SuperBug). I've been pretty much motorcycle-only since then.