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2023 WINNEBAGO EKKO — ELECTRICAL SYSTEM

fire · 2030326 · 2024-10-06

Vehicle

Make
WINNEBAGO
Model
EKKO
Year
2023
Manufacturer
Winnebago Industries, Inc.
Component
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM

Severity

Deaths
0
Injured
0
Fire
Yes
Crash
No
Police report
No
Medical attention
No
Vehicle towed
No

Narrative

We believe our Balmar (the second alternator that powers our Lithium batteries) failed and then created enough heat to either have a small fire or produce copious amounts of toxic smoke. This is a known problem with the Winnebago EKKOs. There has been one round of recalls for the Balmar re-wiring which we had done at the Winnebago Factory Center in Forest City, IA on November 21, 2023. We were in the parking lot at Whole Foods in Jackson, Wyoming when this happened. We opened the hood when we smelled the plastic burning smell and smoke was pouring out. People were gathering and telling us to call 911 to get the fire department out. We decided to discharge the fire extinguishers provided with our EKKO (a Kidde ABC model). If the whole thing caught fire, obviously other people and cars parked next to us would have been in danger. Yesterday, we heard a new “whine” coming from our engine and noticed that our app that measures the power coming into the lithium batteries was fluctuating way more than usual and so we suspected the system was starting to fail. We had no idea it would fail so quickly and so dangerously.

Source

Authoritative
NHTSA ODI Flat-File Downloads
ODI Number
11618348
Machine
JSON-LD · Markdown