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Oh NO my car is on FIRE

jkior

jkior

New member
Joined
Apr 23, 2004
Location
Seekonk MA
carburnt2so.jpg


This some 1200 miles away from home. . .suckage. Has anyone ever had a fire here? It _seems_ to have maybe started in the wiper motor harness, since those were burned the worst, but that may not be true. What's weird is that I had a slight oil leak on the oil feed line for the turbo, so there was a little oil sitting on top of the bearing cartridge - it didn't burn. So I know it wasn't started by exhaust heat (or at least I'm pretty certain), but I'm a little concerned.

By the way, I was going about 45 miles an hour in a construction zone on the interstate when it happened, and was not using the windshield wipers - had not all day. Any idea where else it might have started?
 
just out of curiosity, why is your intake coming out of the turbo leaning against the cylinder head?

is that a result of the fire?

PS nice fuel rail :???:
 
That would be a badly clocked compressor housing.
I think its an oil fire. Check if you have any coolant lines near there.
But its happened to me before in the exact same area, I'm 99% sure its oil.
Make sure your lines are tight!
 
I think there is current going to the wipers at all times, unless I'm mistaken. it's for the parking mechnism, so they can self park even when the switch is turned off. Perhaps the wiper wiring was rubbing against something?

Although, now that I think about it, that should have just burned out a fuse.
 
SwedishFish said:
That would be a badly clocked compressor housing.
I think its an oil fire. Check if you have any coolant lines near there.
But its happened to me before in the exact same area, I'm 99% sure its oil.
Make sure your lines are tight!
Click to expand...

well i'm sure that couldnt have helped intake temperatures, exhaust temperatures, coolant temperatures, oil temps and just about anything else....

i helped clean up a 240 that burned under the hood once

the culprit? clogged PCV that led to oil everywhere (ain those things great)
 
hhm

Turbo and manifold at 400celcius ish with motor oil dripping on and a nice gentle 45 mph breeze?

I'm no mechanic but i'd that is an oil based fire.

My sympathies
 
I am not so sure if it is oil. Did you have any burning around the distributor? If you had a small fuel leak, I see a new fuel rail, that lead to the distributor, instant fire and it does not take much to get it going.
 
From my experience, in an electrical fire, you will find evidence of insulation melting beyond the area where flames were present, you will likely have to cut open the harness to see that.

On one car I owned, there was one wire located next to the headlight (power for the "city" lights) shorted to ground, melted the insulation on that single wire all the way back up into the dash to the fuse panel, and yes it was fused and the fuse did not blow. Thankfully no other damage and no fire.
 
Hmmm. . .no fuel leak; this fire was (fortunately) limited to about eighteen inches of wire around the wiper motor. I think the oil fire theory is actually very good, even though it almost certainly wasn't started by the exhaust. As related in my P&S thread, I was using hard copper oil line that was in process of shearing at the turbo, although I didn't know it at the time. So there was quite a bit of oil getting sprayed around for a a few minutes before the actual fire, and could possibly have gotten into the wiper motor harness. (There is in fact current continuously supplied to the wiper, because after I got the fire out they were going even with the lever "off.")

No fuses blew (at least soon enough to do anything.) The car is back on the road for about two weeks now, having spliced in new wire through that damaged eighteen inches. I'm going back home in three months and am planning on the MS conversion at that point, which is why I'm not especially concerned with using butt splices - not something I'd normally do, but I need the car.

By the way TFT, the wiper motor harness was completely melted from the point where it splits off from the main harness (which was severely damaged as well) and the motor connector was completely dead. Does this at least somewhat fit?
 
jkior said:
By the way TFT, the wiper motor harness was completely melted from the point where it splits off from the main harness (which was severely damaged as well) and the motor connector was completely dead. Does this at least somewhat fit?
Click to expand...
:e-shrug: all power for that circuit goes through fuse #2, if it shorted, I would expect that fuse to blow. There are other circuits that are not fused under the hood, but off hand I'm not sure if one of them could have contributed.

Either way I'd replace fuse #2 anyway, no sense on having a repeat.
 
Good thought, I'll do that. I'm pretty sure that fuse wasn't blown, strangely enough. (I was quite dissatisfied with the lack of blown fuses in the post-fire inspection. There were a few but I suspect they were more related to the shorting that occured once all the insulation had melted enough to allow wires to short out on each other. . .
 
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