RedRaven wrote: I mean I would have never guessed that a steering column would catch fire.
I thought you were a Health and Safety bloke Wayne?
Fires tend to fall into three types.
Fuel, oil and electrical.
Fuel and oil fires are caused by leaks onto something very hot like the exhaust.
Electrical fires are caused by short circuits in the wiring or electrical components. Sometimes heat is involved here too as insulation can melt on something hot and a wire then can get shorted to earth. Buy often shorts are caused by cuts or breaks in the wiring. Once a wire short circuits the full power of the battery can run through it. Causing the wire to heat up like an electric fire element. Which in turn will set fire to anything around it.
The steering column for example has a lot of wires running into it that can carry a lot of current. Your turn signal and ignition wires. If one of those shorted to the inside of the column you would get a lot of smoke and the whole length of wire effected could burst into flames.