Car fires are scary things, no matter the level of flame height. After the last item with the blazing Firebird, I got to thinking about car fires and any of the stuff that I have owned that pulled the car-be-que scenario on me.
The only thing I have ever owned that really caught on fire was an old truck that had been sitting for a couple of years. I got the idea to fire this thing up and after filling the intake manifold with leaking fuel from the carb, the engine sneezed through said carb, ignited the lake of fuel, and fire swallowed the entire under hood area immediately. It was on the edge of the woods behind my parents house at the time and there was big potential for a disaster if those woods went up like a log pile. We’re taking news helicopter levels of badness there. With no fire extinguisher nearby, I made a run for the house and got back in time to knock it down before it turned into a real disaster. Whoopsie doodle. Fire is a hot rodder’s best friend but it can quickly turn and become our worst enemy.
Today we want your horror stories of car fires!
BangShift Quuestion Of The Day: Ever Had A Car or Truck Catch On Fire?
My beloved ’69 442 got burnt to cinders whilst having the cylinder heads ported, the workshop burnt down during the night. Loved that car.
1990 Firebird Formula. Alternator caught fire shortly after being replaced. Only damage was a melted pigtail, and the mounting bracket was ground down by the alternator pulley cooling blades; since the shaft had bent. Faulty bearing? Alternator was covered by Napa, but not the pigtail. It was a small fire, but the possibility of my cherished car (then daily driver) going up in flames shook me up.
Kinda funny, WAAAY back when I was still in high school, I was driving my Morris Minor to a friends house to deliver a motorcycle engine to him. I had the glove box doors off at the time in preperation of pinting the interior trim. I had just stopped by a store and picked up a new Car Craft magazine (back when they were worth reading), and I’d occasionally glance at it while driving as it sat in the open glove box in front of the steering wheel. Then I noticed I was looking at different pages….a small electrical fire had started and was buring the pages with little embers, every evenly, one page at a time! LUCAS, Prince of Darkness electrical system strikes again! By the time I got the car stopped, smoke was filling the interior, and I didn’t even have a damned wrench to unhood the battery. I finally succeeded in getting it unhooked, but not before it burned about every wire under the dash.
When I was a little kid, my best friend and I were riding in the back seat of his mother’s VW beetle. Remember, that this was in the days before car seats and seat belts. Anyway, he and I were jumping around so hard back there that we managed to short out the seat springs against the battery terminals (battery under the back seat) and set the seat stuffing on fire.
As the car began filling with smoke, his mom got the car off the road, us out and pulled a flaming seat bottom out of the car. The story ends with minimal damage and no loss of life, and no, we did not get in trouble for catching the car on fire!
My old ’69 Firebird had a minor wiring/fire issue one night. I was driving down the 10 freeway in So. Cal at night when all of a sudden all my lighting blinked out for a second, which got my attention. Then a minute or two later it went completely out and the engine died, so coasting to the nearest off ramp I managed to coast around a turn and into the parking lot of a donut store right on the corner (which is another story as it wasn’t quite that smooth) and when I popped the hood I saw a flame going right next to the Q-jet, ahh! With no fire extinguish present I managed to blow it out. Then I poked at the wiring harness which immediately lit the fire up again, ahh! And I managed to blow it out again. This time I disconnected the battery then popped the air filter housing off and the wiring loom had melted on the exhaust cross over causing the short. Some electrical taping later and the car fired up and all was good except it had fried my alternator. A week or so later I did a proper wiring patch job and moved the harness to prevent a repeat. Could of been real bad in a hurry had I removed my air filter housing and re-lit the fire. It was just burning a little oil soaked wire looming.
Anyone that’s raced as long as I have, 51 years, has had a fire or two.
I was in the pits trying to figure out why my 61 Plymouth kept flooding. It’d start up but would dump to much gas into the engine about half way down the strip. I cranked it up and started revving the engine to see if I could see what was causing it. I had revved it a couple of times when it coughed and caught fire. I grabbed the fire extinguisher but before I could use it everything under the hood caught fire. I was trying to put it out when the fire department got there and told me to stand back. While they were getting their hose out the whole car went up.
My ’75 Honda xl 350 dual purpose bike I rode in high school caught fire riding through a gas station parking lot….lots of excitement there!
Had a Triumph Spitfire’s high beam switch burst into flames. Luckily, I was able to grab a fire extinguisher and put it out before anything other than the steering column cover was damaged. Or unluckily, given how much trouble that car gave me…
Yes – Yes, years ago we were towing to a race and the transmission in the Dually failed and the fluid in the tranny boiled and overflowed out of the dipstick and onto the exhaust Manifold and caught on fire, I told the guys to grab the fire extinguisher and I had the Malibu unloaded out of the trailer before they had the fire out.
Thankfully, no. Had a few melted wires over the years. Closest thing.
Had a 62 chevy wagon with a 327 w/tripower. The linkage got gummed up, so I sprayed it real good with carb spray. I also had bad plug wires, but didn’t know it. When I started it, flames everywhere. I shut it off and grabbed the closest thing, a water hose, and managed to put it out. Didn’t know that’s not the way to put that kind of fire out, but I got lucky.
That Tahoe blaze happened in a park a couple of towns over last summer. The guy died this Spring.
I had a ground wire burn on my ’75 Duster last week while starting it up, luckily I was able to put out the fire after shutting it off electrically.
The only damage was soot on the firewall from the insulation, and a small paint blister and 1/8 paint burned off the Viper Red firewall.
A minor setback,but it is now fixed.
back in the 80s my buddy Jeff build a 50 ford 2dr custom had fattie in it that was under power so we did a swap to small block ford and auto. . now this car was black, light blue tuck and roll gut ,low, dechromed with louver hood and visor ,not my type of car put this thing just had the look to it that would grow on you. well we get running and he,s going all over the place with it dead nut s reliable untill momth 4or 5 there is 4 of us in the car ,going to a car show in vancouver b.c. half way there the trans starts to act up. as we get to the next light jeff say , i am going to pull in and check the trans fuild at the shell gas station. when it pucked real flames shooting out of the louver hood up the windshield out the louvered visor! .never seen 3 guys bail out of a car at 30 mph that fast ! the poor gas pump kid is shitting bricks all he seeing is a shine black flaming bomb rolling in to the station. my buddy Jeff still is in the flaming bomb cranks a hard left away from the gas pump s rolls out of it . runs over to the pumps grabs the fire extingusher out the gas jock hands runs back puts the fire out. we are like wtf happen. turns out ,buddy Jeff the detail freak got water down the trans filler tube. yes water and oil don,t mix. up the filler tube on to hot headers 1 hot fire new trans , engine wiring etc. and a new paint job black with blue ghost flames.. to this day we still have a good laugh about that poor gas pump jock thinking his time was up. lol.
I reckon my brother’s one was a pain…he’d just bought his first `decent ‘ car , a 1968 XT Falcon 302 (Aussie model, looks similar to a US 67?) anyway, he’d just signed the paperwork, drove it out the yard (Australian Motors in Adelaide, name n shame!!) and, I kid you not, as the front wheels hit the road it burst into flames under the hood- burnt all the wiring, hoses etc but it got rebuilt and he had it for years. The name n shame part, though… the car yard wouldn’t have a bar of taking any responsibility at all, and as he’d technically taken ownership and it was on the road, he was legally screwed. This happed in the mid 70’s, that car yard is still there, and I have never tired from telling people not to go there…
My 1979 Alfa Romeo Alfetta GTV 2.0 this was in the early nineties.
It burned to the ground in the garage of my parents, wich also was gone…
I was welding in the right back wheel arch..the mig wire went through the sheetmetal and torched the backseat (wich i hadn’t removed obviously) in a few moments the whole car was on fire…i could only call the fire brigade and watch.
After the fire was put out, a fireman (asshole) gave me the bare metal key of the Alfa…
A sad story, the lesson to learn here, is to have a friend (and an extinguiser) at the scene if your’e doing a bit of welding this way.