Well I thought that I would use my recent accident to educate everyone on merit of having a halon fire extinguisher handy in their mavs. Last Friday my fiance and I drove to school in his perfectly restored 77 Datsun 280z, we use it for the commute because it's a 5 speed and it gets better gas milage than my v-8. Well about four hours later we came out to find that he had left his lights on and the battery had been drained. We meet up with a friend and thought that we could jump the battery and as long as we could get it started everything would be a okay! Well needless to say the day would just get crappier from there. He tried to crank her over one more time before trying to jump her and all of a sudden out of the hood vents we see a puff of smoke. We thought that something might have gotten into the bay so he popped open the hood and what do you know we had some tiny flames near the battery which we now assume came from the wiring harness that runs along the frame directly underneath the battery. We hit one of those emergency phones and soon the police and fire dept. showed up but not soon enough. Fortunately the car is salvageble and more importantly we are both okay, God only knows how bad it could have been if we had been driving and something like that happened. We are now in the process of having the wiring redone (thank god it only damaged the battery, which was a melted plastic block, the cables, bubbled the 4k paint on the fender and hood (no holes just burned paint), and one fusible link) body work done after it's running again and finding a place to put a halon fire extinguisher. I always used to make fun of the guys with the extinguishers but if we had one the damage would have been trivial and we could have our car home. I know this isn't directly mav related but I know you guys/girls can understand my pain. I'd probably throw myself on the mav if this happened to her. So the lesson, get a fire extinguisher it could save not only your life, but also the cars which we have all put our blood, sweat, tears, and money into. Jeri
I know exactly what you mean. Back in September I almost lost my Toyota pick-up. I came home for lunch from work and it kept hisitating and things were going crazy so I parked it on the street so I could get my other car out to go to work. I thought I would worry about the truck later. 30 minutes go by after lunch and I decided to call my brother because the truck had belonged to him a few months earlier. As I was talking to him I decided to look out the front door and I see smoke. I run outside and see the acid and smell the electric burning I run in the house grab the extinguiesger from by the furnace. I open up the hood and there is a huge flame at the battery. Thank God I was able to get it out myself and there was no damage but a burn mark on the underside of the hood. The bracket had broken off on the battery harness and it fell into the a/c compressor. Needless to say now I have an extinguisher for the car and full insurance coverage. God was with me that day not as much as melted cable and the fuse box is right next to battery.
fires two yrs. ago my buddy and I were getting ready to leave his house, we jumped in his 68 el camino he went to start it and it backfired through the carb well do to a cracked fuel line and crappy plug wires when he hit the key again the bad wires grounded on the intake and started a puddle of gas on the intake on fire. by the time he ran back to the house got the doors unlocked and found something to get out the fire out he lost the edelbrock carb, distributor, wiper motor, throttle cable,paint on the hood, and all the wiring harness across the firewall. it was not a pretty sight.
I always keep a fire extinguisher in all my cars. Around here, alot of car shows require you to have one in your posession before you can enter the show. Plus about 12 years ago my Sprint was in a accident, where in the trunk, the rubber seal around the filler neck that bolts to the trunk floor, caught fire. I managed to beat it out with my hands but got some good burns doing so. Seems we all learn lessons the hard way.
Jerilyn, I am glad know one got hurt. Thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention. I have been thinking about get some fire extinguishers myself for the cars, this only reaffirms it. Another suggestion I would make it have a fire extinguisher in your garage. After hearing how dangerous gasloling fumes can be in your garage (very flamable!), I decided to buy one for the garage. They are cheap insurance in my opinion.
first the couger now the cherokee!!!! last night after i posted about the couger i went out and started working on my 75 Jeep Cherokee I'm tryin to decide if i should put the motor in my mav cauce it's a Ford 300 I6. well any way i gave it a little tune up to get it running after sittin for 5 yearsafter i got it runin i let it idle for a few minutes to charge tha battery but when i went to take of for a test drive i put the clutch in and rapped the moter a little i was about ready to drop the clutch when i heard a pop sounded like a black cat. i though it was just a back fire so i took off got about 15 foot when the jeep died so i opened the hood and my carb was compleatly engalfed in flames i was right by the garage so i crabbed the fire extinguisher i had in there after i got the fire i checked and didn't see much damage. I'm goin out a little later so i can check it better it's kinda hard to see the damage when it's dark out!!!
doh.. thats messed up... sorry to here that. i had a fuse that didn't pop on one of my amps in my maverick back in the day.. well it caught on fire in my trunk! la very scary site! lucky i had a fire extinguisher. so yeah i would agree totally with you! a $20.00 item in the car and the garage can save a thousands! but then again i saw an old bug on fire in front of my old work and the guy was trying to put it out with his fire extinguisher but it ran out.... i watch the car burn to the ground
well here a few months ago i was helpin my friend fix his super beetle the breaks suck on it so we had it up on those thins you roll your car onto to get it up into the air so that i could try and figure out how to bleed the breaks, never done a bug before, it was pissing me off so i said let me take it for a test drive to see if the ajustments i had done had worked, because you have to manulay ajust the brakes on a bug, i didn't know that because the bug had been on that angle gas flowed right into the carb and alot of fumes got into the air filter well i started down the street and the thing back fired and the it started to go real slow not getting any oxegen and then died i was like what the heck is going on i just happend to look back and there were flames comming out of the engine compartment i hoped out and opeaned up the trunk and tryed to blow it out that didn't work so i threw some snow on it and that put it out the really funny thing was is that an older lady and i think her daughter came out of there house and told me to get away from the car because it was going to explode the carb never would have done what it did but my friends brother had rebuilt the carb with his friend and did a really bad job it sucked really bad were still trying to fix it my friend had to buy another bug for parts the air filer was completly melted and a large portion of the wiring harness was gone the distributor was completly screwed up the key broke off in the ignition and the power going to the ignition coil got grounded out and melted i was really pissed off becuase it is me who gets to fix every thing because my friend know nothing about cars
wow!! one comma and no periods!! One never thinks fire is an issue with their cars. In my younger/dumber years, I was working on my 74 dart, and had nothing but a candle. Of course, I was working on the carb. I told my friend to hold the candle just a little closer....WHOOSH!!!! I freeked out, had flames coming out of the carb. I though the car would blow up. I remembered what My auto shop teacher had told me, and cranked the car over, I'll be damned!!! I got lucky, the flames were sucked right down into the engine and that was that!
i stopped to help a guy that had his car on fire and he told me to let the s.o.b. burn. he said it had been nothing but one thing after another for a month or two. he thanked me and i left. i guess all fires are not bad. i also saw a guy shoot his lawn mower with a shotgun because it wouldn't start. ...frank...:bananaman :bananaman
