Fire Fighting Foam

In all my years of driving, I've had a few cars catch on fire.

The first one was in my third Kombi van (OK, sometimes I'm a slow learner). This was after I had stopped being a scientist, and had turned into a long-haired film-maker/cab driver/roadie for bands. I was helping a friend shift her stuff to her new flat, and had just carried the last load up the stairs. As I came down to the Kombi, I saw flames licking up the body out of the engine compartment, and out of the side door. It didn't take very long to destroy most of my possessions, including my only shoes.

I had an interview the very next day (Monday, 9.00 am) for a lecturer's position at the Sydney Technical College. The funny thing was that even though I didn't wear any shoes to the interview, they still offered me the position!

The next car fire I was involved in happened a few years later. I was driving my '59 Pontiac (the one with the huge rocket fins) along the road when the car in front suddenly had flames erupt out of the bonnet. Everybody stopped, and I rushed up to offer help. The driver was panicking, but luckily he had in his car a small red fire extinguisher. I remained perfectly unruffled (probably because it was not my car), calmly read the instructions on the fire extinguisher, lifted the bonnet, and put out the fire.

In the next vehicle fire, I was not so relaxed. It happened on our First Grand Triumphal Tour of Australia (ie, the shakedown cruise) in our 4WD Volvo C304. We had just filled both tanks with petrol at Three Ways in the Northern Territory - about 300 litres! Mary was driving, I was in the passenger seat and Little Karl (LK) was on the special seat in between us. We had been on the road for about an hour, heading east towards Queensland, lumbering along at a comfortable 70 kph, when Mary said (God bless her observant eyes, and excellent mirror habits) ''There's a big oily black cloud coming out from under the petrol tank on my side. Should I be worried?"

Suddenly my brain went into overdrive, and then into video replay, and the most likely cause of a ''big black oily cloud coming out from under the petrol tank'' popped into my mind. There was an immediate diagnostic question, which I asked ''Mary, what's the oil pressure, please?'' ''Zero'' replied Mary.

''Mary, switch off the engine right now, then quickly pull over to the side of the road, and I'll grab Little Karl''. She stopped the vehicle, I grabbed LK, and joined her in the middle of the dirt track, about 10 metres from the Volvo, as we watched black smoke and flames lick up under the petrol tank. We were alive, which was the most important thing.

We watched for another few seconds, and then I said ''I may as well get the fire extinguisher''. Mary agreed, so I handed LK to her, dived into the truck, grabbed one of the fire extinguishers, and dived out again. Then Mary and I had a minor panic as we tried to read the instructions, and then I rushed over the truck, lay on my back at the side of the truck, squirted the fire foam all over the oil lines, rolled away from the truck, and rushed back to Mary and LK. The fire was out, and it stayed out.

It was all my own fault, of course. I hadn't properly re-seated the oil cooler adaptor plate a few days previously, when I had changed the oil and the oil filter.

When I was preparing the Volvo for Outback trips, I had been worried about the engine oil overheating. The only way I could install an engine oil cooler was to insert a special adaptor plate under the oil filter. The act of tightening up the oil filter held the adaptor plate on. The plate had an outlet and an inlet, which went to and from the oil cooler up at the front of the vehicle. Of course, being obsessive, I had bought really expensive, fire-proof, flexible rubber oil hoses.

As Mary was describing the smoke cloud, I remembered that I had not been entirely happy with the fit and angle of the adaptor plate, when I was refitting the oil filter. I had fiddled with it a few times to get it right. Obviously, I had not gotten it exactly right. Obviously, it had come loose, letting hot engine squirt out onto the nearby stainless steel exhaust pipe. And when Mary said that the oil pressure was zero, that confirmed my diagnosis.

The next thing to do was fix things up.

The fire had melted the resin in the top of the nearby oil pressure switch (which turned on a red light when the oil pressure was zero). No worries there, because, being obsessive, I carried a spare oil pressure switch.

Practically all the engine oil had gone, but I always carried a spare 5 litres - so that was easy to fix.

The oil filter was loose, so all I had to do was tighten it properly. The rubber oil hoses were, to the naked eye and feeling fingers, undamaged by the fire.

A wiring bundle was slightly damaged. But one beauty of a fairly low-tech vehicle is that it is quite easy to fix. I just soldered up a few wires together, using a few bridging pieces of wire.

Finally, I checked the fuel lines and the filters. I remembered the incredulity at the Volvo shop from some of the younger mechanics, when I returned with 13 metres of fuel hose that cost $7 per metre. This top-of-the-line hose, which had a wall some 7 mm thick, was rated to be fire-resistant.''Maaate'', a few of them had cried,''why didn't you get some 30 cents per metre clear plastic hose?'' If the fuel line had melted as easily as the resin on the oil pressure switch, I would have had 150 litres of fuel dribbling onto the fire.

Six months later, lying on my back on a dirt track under my now-repaired Volvo, I was really glad I had bought the better fuel hose.

Copyright © Karl S. Kruszelnicki