Sparks coming from air handler

[myhvacx]

18000 btu upflow closet unit w/electric heater,
call for cooling had just kicked in when sparks came out of the air handler, it lasted approximately 1 minute.
turned breaker off and checked inside wiring, everything looked dry and in good shape, tight.
checked breaker box and found no abnormalities..

any ideas?

[Mr Bill]

My guess would be you had some heat strips burn into or break and fell against the chassis.

[myhvacx]

Something I missed, there was some steam coming from a closeby shower room at the time this happened.

[toocoolforschool]

You mean you watched sparks fly for a minute??? yikes.

[myhvacx]

yah, well I didn't see the sparks myself, the first picture above shows the corner of the air handler, if you look closely you can see the burnt screw below the tape... Further testament of the presence of the sparks is when I turned breaker off and felt the warmth just on that one part of the handler, felt like 85 degrees.

[toocoolforschool]

You have to find the short which is somewhere in the unit.

[Mr Bill]

if you look closely you can see the burnt screw below the tape...

Looks to me like "from what I can see in that small picture" the plastic terminal block may have got hot due to loose connection, and did a semi meltdown, and the hot wires may have touched the chassis on the back side of the terminal block.