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."
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.
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.
To me, when you say intake, I immediately am thinking of the air intake.
Why come?
Feel free to put a few quarts/litres of 10W-40 in your crankcase, however.
I agree odds are intake means... oil orifice in this case. But I figure we're already in car abuse land might as well see how deep the rabbit intake goes.
I've never tried it, but I think my 1930 all-fuel tractor could run on 10w-40. I've run it on "it used to be gasoline 4 years ago", ethanol, and diesel.
After I saw this I pulled him aside and asked to take a look at his engine and there was a thick layer of baked on oil on the side with the oil filler, and that oil was contaminated with thick clumps of dust and dirt from a general lack of maintenance, which in retrospect might have acted like a wick.
It took a full can of degreaser spray and a lot of vigorous wiping to remove the majority of it, and after doing that along with the exhortation to use a funnel when adding oil, the car engine did not burst into flame again. (He had become very capable in quickly detecting and extinguishing engine fires before they caused enough damage to the vehicle to disable it)
That car lasted a good two years before he wrecked and totaled it.
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.
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.
I specifically remember the biggest recent offender being Hyundai due to non electrical oil issues.
https://www.consumernotice.org/personal-injury/vehicle-safet...