Wow. You got lucky that she got you out of there.
'86 model? Maybe time for a new ride bro.
I was blasting through a less than desirable neighbourhood late one night , i just installed the blower motor from Hell in a 130 degree rat infested attic and my skin was crawling , all of a sudden i see flames gushing from the hood of my 86 Astro van ! , i slam on the asbestos pads and jump out of the van open the hood and the alternator is on fire ! so i open the side door and my options are as follows
a) jug of 22 !
b) jug of 12 !
c) empty fire extinguisher !
d) coil cleaner !
e) acetylene !
f) empty nitrogen ( just my luck )
g) vac pump oil !
h) can of gasoline !
i grabbed the 22 and blasted the alternator , well hello phosgene cloud !
( pre montreal protocol )
fire was out in a second thank god !
The old girl started and i limped back to the crib ,
hell of a night
Wow. You got lucky that she got you out of there.
'86 model? Maybe time for a new ride bro.
I was reminizin ! that Astro ran until 97 !
I don't think you would get in trouble for putting a fire out with r-22.
Halon is another banned substance, that is still being used.
Karst means cave. So, I search for caves.
Nicely done ... keep the tales comin'. I have some funny stories, but I'm too wordy and putem to sleep by the time I'm done.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
You couldn't limp home on battery power alone these days with modern autos. I remember the old days when after the car started, you could pull the battery cables off the battery and the alternator would keep the ignition firing. It was one way you could tell if your alternator was still good or not.
I once put a fire out in my own car with the sprayer at a pay n' spray car wash. Earlier in the day I had traipsed through a muddy parking lot at school to reach my car. Rather than tracking the mud inside, I wiped my shoes on the door sill, telling myself I'd wash it off later in the day when the weather improved. Later that day I hit the pay n' spray, opened the car door, and aimed the sprayer to to shoot the mud off the sill and into the car wash bay. I then closed the door and went on to wash the rest of the car.
While I was doing that, I noticed the windows appearing to fog up. I thought at first I must've splashed a little water on the carpet and raised the humidity inside the car. But it kept getting worse and worse, and happened so fast, that I got curious and opened the car door, only to realize the underside of my dashboard was on fire! Still holding the sprayer in my hand, I moved it to douse the fire. Just as I did, the timer ran out! I had to quickly dig into my pocket to find more change! Thank goodness I had some, or the car would've been toast. I threw in the money, gave the dash a few quick squirts, fire went out. The only thing that had caught fire was some extra wiring I had added to run an eight track tape deck. Egads...supremely dated myself. Apparently some water had splashed up under there and shorted something in the deck. I drove the car home...smelly but intact. The tape deck went into the trash when I got there.
One dark night I was going home and the windows started fogging up, so I turned on the defroster, a few minutes later I smelled burning pine wood, I thought a house must have been on fire, but it kept getting stronger, then all of a sudden the cab was full of smoke, I kinda paniced at first, pulled into a gas station and raised the hood, but nothing was on fire, but the defroster fan had quit. The next day I checked it out, some pine needles had fallen down the vent on the cowling and had gotten into the resistor bank that makes the blower multi speed, and caught on fire, it was a wierd experiance
I was told once by a guy at work that he caught a RTU on fire, sprayed the fire with a dry power ext. He went down stairs to tell the manager what happened and saw alot of the dry powder was drifting into the french fries. they never even stopped scooping fries, dry powder and all
"Paddle faster, I hear banjo music"
I picked a few small things at the supply house, since it wasent much I put the stuff next to me in the cab. One of the things was a small yellow tank of mapp gas did not remember that there is a heat outlet at the bottem of motor cover the relief valve went while i was driving I thought oh sh** the truck is guna blow up ,pulled over real fast
'''''''I remember the old days when after the car started, you could pull the battery cables off the battery and the alternator would keep the ignition firing.''''''''
78 chevy truck, left it running at the mall parking lot while I yanked the battery for exchange at sears,... about 1986. Cannot do that nowadays for a number of reasons.
A few years ago at my previous job, My van was in the shop for some exhaust work , The sevice manager dropped me off to pick it up and I quickly threw my bag of hand tools in the back and took off. About a mile down the road I smelled something burning , but thought it was just the new exhaust...Another mile down the road and there was smoke in the cab, I looked in the back and saw flames I pulled over, ran around to the side doors with a fire extinquisher, When I opened the door I see that the fire is limited to my tool bag and I put it out with just a couple of swats with my cap. .. It turns out, when I threw my tool bag in , I knocked a small hand held propane torch over and the self striker actually "struck" and caught the tool bag on fire ....Burned a big hole in the side of the bag and melted the insulation off of some pliers...I never did tell the old boss about it
And I also learned a lesson ... Always take the torch head off the propane tank before storing it.
I was removing a metal cabinet from inside a 1997 Aerostar , it was attached to the floor , and one bolt wouldnt come loose . So I grab the ol torch set out and whack that dude off . Half the bolt drops thru the floor and half is in with me . Next thing I know theres a whoooosh and sounds of a flame thrower underneath the van .... and theres flames justa rollin up the sides of the van !
Im jump out and grab a fire ext from inside the shop , and im sprayin all under the van until I got the fire out . Luckily it didnt hurt much besides melt a few lettering emblems .
I crawl under there to find out what happened . The dag gone red hot bolt had landed right on the frame rail on top of the plastic fuel line . 60 psi of fuel came out quick buddy . Good thing the engine was off ... that could have gotten ugly .