A MESSAGE TO ALL. DONT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE I DID.

[MegasquirtCA]

Well I've only told a few people about my incident friday last week. Well aparently the worse feeling you can get when it comes to your car either A. Being Stolen or B. Car on fire.

Well my car fell into category B.

Friday morning I was working on the car fixing the vacuum leaks that were causing my engine to idle at 3000rpms, along with finishing up the Stainless Steel Braided fuel lines. Aparently the compression fitting I used failed and didnt create a proper seal causing the line to leak but unfortunatly I couldnt find this out until it was too late, but the fuel leak wasn't truly the problem, it seemed the previous owner hacked up the lower engine harness on the KA which I wasnt aware of because the exposed wires were hidden under all the built up dirt and grime. Since I was by myself I really couldnt catch the problem since I was inside the cockpit running a diagnostic with megasquirt and megaview.

So once I turned the car on the motor idled at a nice 800rpms and to the corner of my eye the passenger side of the engine bay caught on fire. I immediatly shut the car off, ran to get the extinguisher and put out the fire. All within in 15 seconds from start to finish.

Aparently the compression fitting leaked onto the lower harness where the wires were which shorted it out causing it to fire up. Since I caught it in time I was able to save the car and motor. From what the damage looks like its all the fuel lines, SARD FPR, Fuel Filter, Megasquirt wiring harness, and fuse block were destroyed.

So pretty much a lot of cleaning, rewiring, repainting and new parts.

Learn from my mistake check and double check everything, if it wasnt for quick thinking and the fire extinguisher next to each door at my apartment complex my project would of been gone.

What hurts the most is today would of been the day for my test drive.

The pics make it seem like its not that bad, its because I spent a day cleaning and preping it for paint.

[teddy]

That's awful man. Im sorry that happened. I guess the bright side is that you did catch it before it got out of hand, and a couple hundred dollars of damage could have turned into a few thousand.

[Not_a_sr]

at least you got the fire out and its not going to be easy but its fixable!

had somthing similar happen to me when working on my friends CA last week. big scare

[1via]

that sucks. Sorry to hear that. Hope you can fix it. I was working on the car two days ago and I had a fuel leak myself. The clamp was cracked and the fuel was leaking from the fuel line next to the intake manifold. It was leaking to the bottom of the manifold so I brought a new clamp and its not leaking no more. I was out there for a while and checked to see that everything was good a couple of times.

[r34 gtr]

man, im sorry to hear that. car + fire = bad (from what im told). im scared to death mine will catch fire one of these days (its done everything else) so i keep a 2.5lb halon extinguisher in it at all times.

i hope you can get it back on the road quickly. if i can be of assistance please feel free to yell at me. best of luck man.

- Tim

[flohtingPoint]

Jeez man, my condolences.

*Tips beer for fellow CA owner*

[float_6969]

My first car was a 1986 Ford Tempo. The ECU died and I switched it to carburation. Shortly after I had a fuel leak and burned the car, LITERALLY to the ground. It was barely recognizeable. From start to finish the fire lasted about 5 min. It had burnt itself up and was only smoking by the time the fire department showed up.

It's amazing how quickly a car will go up....

[bps71]

Dude that really sucks...... do hope it all works out quickly for ya.