Well, that sucks.

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magnumdust

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:banghead: What do you get what you get when upgrade your ignition, added a high flow efi pump, and an efi system on 40yr year old wiring? Some of you know where this is headed.

I didnt plan to work on my car today, instead my truck needed a little love, so i started my car up to move it into the street and as soon as it starts up, smoke is pouring out of the hood. Pop the hood and the whole firewall area is engulfed in flames. So i yank off the battery cables and turn towards the fire extinguisher in the garage, but remember my dad hasnt had that thing charged in 20+yrs. So i immediately run for the hose, which of course, happened to have no spray nozzle on it. :banghead:

My neighbor sees the flames and yells to his son to get theirs, of course theirs is not in its place, and i end up just drenching my entire engine bay with a garden hose and slowly the fire went out.

Damage done: Main wiring harness is completely melted. EFI wiring harness completely melted, coil wires melted, distributor cap is toast, if not more. My plan is to buy a new wiring kit and re-do every inch of wiring in this car, find and fix the fuel leak(yes, checked/double checked many times prior to this, as far as i knew, it didnt leak) and *hope* i can send my efi's ecu to the manufacturer and have them replace the wires on it. If not, then i have to decide if i want to buy a new ecu(400+bucks) or find a used megasquirt ecu and run that instead of the powerjection ecu.

Good thing i didnt try to go racing yesterday. I would've been driving along, had no means to put it out and watched all my work burn to the ground.



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glad the car and everyone else is ok. It can be rebuilt!
 
had that happen 1nce as well15 year old fire extinguisher. so I saw a blanket on the porch I grabbed that to smother the fire but it was a nylon made 5$ walmart sleeping bag it melted thru the fuel filter and soaked the blanket and poof had a real wennie roaster going finally ran and got the hose got it out melted the whole wiring harness by then the blanket was melted to evry part under that hood and the carb I was trying from a friend . I never checked to see if the carb was all put together and tight I just assumed it was , what a dumass attack I had but like stated above at least no 1 got hurt and it was outside and not in the garage to burn my cars and toys up. # stay safe # 2 make sure your fire extinguishers are up to date and close and I guess don't assume anything borrowed or new is turn key ready. glad you didn't get hurt our toys can be replaced, you know the rest of the story. good thread fire destroys be prepaired
 
Sorry to hear of your dilemma Magnumdust and I know there are persons here who do not want to change their wiring but that is the first thing I done when building my 64 Signet. I removed it all and installed a Ron Francis back in the 80's...
 
Sorry to hear about that and glad you are ok. Let me know if I can help in any way.

Aj
 
Failure analysis conclusions:
#1 Fire extinguisher in back seat. ALL the time.
#2 Relays, fuses, and fusible links. ALL the time. Know your current draw, and size every wire accordingly. When in doubt, buy the biggest wire you can afford.
#3 Power accessory blocks for high-draw stuff.
#4 Battery disconnects. Use 'em. Every time.

I'm glad you weren't hurt, and your car is fixable. I burned a friend's motorcycle to the ground one time. Lesson learned.
 
I dug into the car today, ridding it of all the wiring surrounding the engine bay. It looks like everything will be easy to re-wire except i'll have to find a new blower motor. Though maybe i'll leave that unhooked until i can spring for A/C.

Anyways. ripped out all the engine bay wiring for safety sake and then ran a jumper to my fuel pump to find out where in the fuel line i had a leak. What happened? well my throttle body immediately belched a big splash of fuel at the firewall.

So it may not have necessarily been wiring. Instead, the fuel may have found something hot or the fumes got to in the distributor/coil area and ignited it. :wack:

Now i'm in a bit of a pickle. Do I rewire this car, hook the system up and hope i can get it to seal(note: no loose bolts, throttle body was sealing at the injectors when i drove it. I was paranoid about leaks and double/triple checked everything), dump it in the trash and go back to carbs(dont really want that), and lastly, try to come up with a system of mounting using a fuel rail instead of these crappy "caps" that give the TB its carb appearance.
 

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Well you do realize that's still a TBI---can you reconfigure that computer for multiport? I'm not familiar with that particular system. Otherwise, you'd just have to find another TBI unit to replace that one, and which would mate up to your computer.

(Some of the Holley systems use the same computer, just different setup---my "now obsolete" Holley Commander, example, can TBI or multiport inject I guess about anything with the correct computer programming)
 
67Dart273 said:
Well you do realize that's still a TBI---can you reconfigure that computer for multiport? I'm not familiar with that particular system. Otherwise, you'd just have to find another TBI unit to replace that one, and which would mate up to your computer.

(Some of the Holley systems use the same computer, just different setup---my "now obsolete" Holley Commander, example, can TBI or multiport inject I guess about anything with the correct computer programming)
Click to expand...

I think you misunderstood me, i mean instead of those "caps" devise some sort of short rail system on the throttle body to provide a better seal. Though first i'm gonna take off those caps and see how bad it looks, maybe put on those large injectors and do a number of tests to see if it will seal(100+ tries at pressurizing) before i set to customizing it or tossing it in the garbage.
 
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