Posted: 11/15/2002 5:14:53 PM EDT
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My Moms 87' Chrysler Lebaron Turbo just tried to do its best-and perhaps final-impression of a Zippo in our garage about a hour and a half ago. She had been out shopping in town. She thought she smelled gas vapor when she was in town at the stop lights. But she thought it was from someone else's clunker running rich. And when she got out on the 4 lane part of US 60 where its 65mph the smell went away, the slipstream carried it away. She gets home about quarter after five, I am here talking with the guy who is going to wire our garage and patio. We go open the gate for her, and we are walking in behind the car to the garage, and we both asked each other at the same time "do you smell smoke". Mom parks the car in the garage, turns the engine off and the digital dash lights up like a christmas tree. And BLACK smoke starts pouring out the hood. We have her pop the hood and Jack lifts the bonnet and FLAMES shoot out from the back side of the engine. All the wireing and vacume lines around the intake pellum are on fire. Jack slamns the hood down. We don't have a fire bottle anymore, gave it away to the guy who bought our old camper. So I'm by the door so I jump in and grab the handset dial 911 and run back out and I hold the phone with one hand and help Jack and Mom push the burning car out of the garage with the other, hoping to get it out before it becomes completely involved. We get it out and safely on the gravel driveway where it cant ignite anything else and Jack decides to try and use the hose garden hose on it and try to save it. So I lift the hood up he gives it a good squirt of water, and it does go out. I was afraid that it might be oil and would splatter, or that the fuel pump might still be on and it would just wash burning fuel around the engine bay. But the watter worked. Guess the garden hose had too much flow for the amount of gas that was leaking. 911 had hung up on me (!) so I had to dial them up again to tell them to turn back the firetruck. One of the voulunteers stopped by in his private car though while I was on the phone and he gave it a look over and cleared it. It appears, as far as we can tell in the dark and without cleaning it off, that the fuel injector runner cracked. This has pissed my dad off to no end, he loves that convertable, and all that burned and the runner were replaced less than 3 years ago by the mechanics at the shop he works for. Gonna be at least a grand in damages. It may have to sit parked for a while. Probably will have to give my Mom back my 86' Aries wagon-over 300k on it and never once gave us a problem like this (knock on wood). This could have happened to Mom anywhere in the 20 miles between here and Arrowhead. She was damn lucky that it only happend as she turned the key off. If it had lit while the engine was running the the fuel was at pressure the car would have gone up in seconds. |
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Strange, a mechanic in our shop just had his Chrysler mini-van catch on fire and burn slam up. Turns out the new piece of high-pressure fuel injection hose he installed on it bursted and sprayed fuel onto the exhaust somehow igniting the fuel. He just had taken full coverage off of it a couple months ago. Oh well. Hope you get it straightened out real soon. MM419 |
| If it makes you feel any better, a friend of mine is an asst. fire chief (20 years experience) and told me a while back that the only explosions of gas tanks he has ever seen have been in VERY high speed accidents and collisons. Cars catching on fire just do that- burn, fiercely, but slowly. But when they do finally catch all over, what a mess, esp. nowadays with the majority of the body panels of plastic. |
| I had a Chrysler 2.2l turbo Daytona (same engine and drivetrain as the Lebaron) do basiclly the same thing as I was driving it the injector fuel rail leaked and sprayed fuel all over the hot turbo housing and eventually caught fire at about 50 mph. suddenly power and boost went away as the passenger compartment filled with black smoke in about a second and it was all I could do to get the car stopped before I had to fall out the drivers door just to be able to breathe. I by force of sheer luck made it to the side of the road and there was no traffic around. The car burnt to the chassis right there. It was fully insured and less than a year old (87 - same year)My insurance co paid off my loan less than a week later. The adjuster who came out to see the melted pile of plastic and soot said that the series was known for it (fires)and that there were recalls from chrysler to fix o-rings on the fuel rail. I liked the car but was not really all that upset to lose it I was pissed cause I had just a few days before paid the next months car payment and the the insurance co paid off the loan for me.DooH! Sorry about your loss hope no-one was injured and glad you were able to save the house from damage once they go its huge how big of a fire they generate. |
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Yeah, my Dad had just gone back to work for a Chrysler dealer as a service writer when they had to do the recall for the 2.2 turbo IIs. O rings couldn't stand the heat and had to be replaced. Ours is the 2.5L Turbo III, not the normal 2.2L turbo. This was the last year for the Turbo in the Lebaron and for the folding headlights. Only about 5000 made because they couldn't sell them in CA. That was part of the reason why Dad was trying to hold on to it. The majority of Lebarons built that model year were 3.0L Mitsubishi V6s, the first year that engine was available. Turbo engines have this kind of trouble when they get old. They operate at such high temps, then when they sit and cool off, the heat cycle is just much steeper than in normally asperated cars like my old Aries wagon. This is why Dodge could never get police departments to buy the turbos for police cars, too much heat and too many heat related service problems. |