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When I read that my first thought was "I bet most car fires are electrical or exhaust related, not from a random gas line leak."
by rootusrootus 4y ago
When I read that my first thought was "I bet most car fires are electrical or exhaust related, not from a random gas line leak."
- SoftTalker 4y agoThe first "new" car I ever bought had a rubber gas line under the hood that was never properly clipped into place. It rubbed against the edge of the clip until eventually it cut through the line causing a leak. Fortunately I smelled the gasoline before it caught fire. I don't buy new cars any more. I buy well used ones, they are the survivors, and someone else pays the depreciation and finds the lemons.
- peteradio 4y agoFortunately gasoline will generally evaporate in moderate heat rather than ignite! Unless there is another ignition source which might be common enough on a poorly maintained vehicle. I've driven cross-country with a leaky fuel rail, would not recommend!
- sonofhans 4y ago> I don't buy new cars any more. I buy well used ones, they are the survivors, and someone else pays the depreciation and finds the lemons. Yes, exactly, right there with you. A good car will still be good after 10 years of use. Any car that isn’t worth buying at that point isn’t worth buying to begin with.
- giantg2 4y agoI assume all fires in EVs are electrical. I doubt there are very many true electrical fires in ICE vehicles. Even if there is an arc, you need some kind of fuel to get a real fire going. Sometimes that might be the rubber/plastic components. But I feel like it's more likely to just be the ignition source for a fuel leak.
- peteradio 4y agoPlastic burns pretty well, my 1991 F150 had a fire under the hood that was entirely electrical.
- giantg2 4y agoMany automotive plastics have fire retardant additives. It's certainly possible to have an entirely electrical fire. I just think it's a much lower rate.
- peteradio 4y agoI don't know what to tell ya, I assume I'm not an exceptional case. Maybe the characteristics change after 25+ years of use and multiple hundreds of thousands of miles.
- rootusrootus 4y agoBasically all of the fire recalls on ICE vehicles in the recent past have been electrical in nature.
- giantg2 4y agoDo you have a link to those? I specifically remember the biggest recent offender being Hyundai due to non electrical oil issues. https://www.consumernotice.org/personal-injury/vehicle-safety/highway-vehicle-fires/ https://www.consumernotice.org/personal-injury/vehicle-safet...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Gordonjcp 4y agoPetrol boils off too quickly to be a massive problem, it's vapour and gone before anything happens. Brake fluid has a high boiling point, a low flash point, and it's sticky. Burst a brake pipe and spray that onto a hot exhaust and you've got a great source of fire. I know from personal experience that if you can get the exhaust manifold hot enough (like, dull red) and you pop a coolant line, the water will boil into steam leaving the glycol antifreeze which will burn with an acrid greenish flame.
- BizarroLand 4y agoI had a friend who had 3 cars burst into flames inside of two years. It was the strangest thing, engines caught on fire out of the blue. Admittedly, he was pretty poor (we all were at that time) and his cars were old beaters, but that didn't explain how three different cars could have their engines set on fire out of the blue in such a short time period. The strangeness of this situation finally revealed itself when I witnessed him checking the oil on his car. It was low, (they all burned oil) and he had some on hand to top it up. I watched him open a bottle and dump it into the intake, spilling copious amounts before getting it settled in. He was basting his engines in oil. No one ever taught him to use a funnel or told him he might want to clean up spills like this. When you make something idiot proof, the universe makes a better idiot.
- Infernal 4y agoWhen you say he dumped the oil into the intake... are you using the word intake to mean the place in the valve cover where the oil is supposed to go? To me, when you say intake, I immediately am thinking of the air intake.
- mikestew 4y agoNot OP, but I'm going to guess confusion between "intake" and the hole in the valve cover where oil goes. I say this because I imagine the result of pouring it into the intake is a non-starting car, not a fire. Cars don't run on 10W-40.
- mikeryan 4y agoI’d assume both. Leak to provide the fuel and a spark to ignite it.