Blown Camry Engine - need suggestions

You brought up a bunch of recall numbers with no explanation. I asked you to explain how that was relevant. You still haven't explained.

Yes you did. You said

"You can't possibly know whether there was a "sudden release of the entire contents of the cooling system" preceding the fire that Don speaks about."

You argued against the possibility that the engine compartment was doused in coolant. The only reasonable conclusion is that you can't accept the idea of the engine compartment being flooded with coolant because you don't believe a fire could occur if that happened. Maybe you missed the part of the story where he described what the 'basketball size hole' looked like:

"up toward the head end of things, most of the #2 and #3 cylinders were open to daylight"

If you knew how an engine block was put together you would know that you can only see the cylinders if the outer wall of the water jacket is removed. Does that answer your question "how I know the contents of the cooling system was dumped"? He described a hole in the side of his block where a large piece of metal whose main purpose is to contain the coolant is missing. Unless you think his description is a lie the conclusion that the engine compartment was flooded in coolant is inescapable. Your question is like asking if someone dives into the ocean "How do you know they gat wet".

Yes I get that. But in the context of this discussion that opinion is not very useful. They use ethylene glycol in fire sprinkler systems to keep the pipes from freezing. When there is a fire the antifreeze mix is sprayed on the fire

*to put the fire out*. In case you don't comprehend what that means: the same mixture of antifreeze and water used in automobiles is used to put fires out and to keep things that aren't burning from catching fire. Flooding things with coolant is very effective way to suppress fires.

So the whole point of your initial response is not correct. The fact that the engine compartment was flooded with antifreeze does make the fire part of the story unbelievable. You may be able to take a small amount of coolant remove the water and get it to burn. But in the story the large amount of water that flooded the engine compartment makes the antifreeze pretty much irrelavent. A mixture of water and antifreeze doesn't burn.

Ok apparently you haven't folowed the thread and aren't aware of the stated purpose of the story. The reason for the story was he thinks it proves that a person can be just tooling down the highway and the engine can without any warning throw a rod and leave a basketball size hole in the block. There are 2 fundamental problems with his theory and the story presented to support it:

A) You have to believe in things like the 'miracle of burning antifreeze' to buy all the facts presented in the story. B) The story contains absolutely no evidence the engine threw a rod.

Yes the part about a thrown rod is bullshit - that much is correct. But, I never said you claimed there was a thrown rod. The thrown rod was supposed to be the point of the whole story. I'm sorry that caused you some confusion. I just assumed you had been following the thread all along.

-jim

----== Posted via Pronews.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----

The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! >100,000Newsgroups

---= - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

I explained in an earlier post. You are under the mistaken impression that engine coolant will not burn, the fact that this did indeed happen on Ford ambulance chassis E-350s refutes your belief.

I wasn't arguing that there was no coolant released, I was arguing that YOU could in no way know what rate it was released at. Key word there is "sudden." Take my statement in context to what I was replying to instead of cherry picking it.

That's right. If the fire was caused by the coolant, odds are that the coolant was aerosolized because that is consistent with how the Ford ambulance fires occurred according to the information I was exposed to

20 years ago. It's entirely possible that there was a small leak spraying in a critical area that caused a fire and that eventually, that small leak cause a larger catastrophic failure which is what Don was describing that he saw once he pulled over and opened the hood.

It is possible that there was a small leak spraying on a critical area that caused a fire and a separate unrelated catastrophic failure which caused the block damage that Don describes.

Point is; you have blinders on thinking that the only sequence of events are those which YOU offer. IOWs, a knee-jerk reaction.

I couldn't care less about the hole in the block, my point(s) all along are;

1) coolant does burn under the right circumstances 2) You can't possibly know what order of events occurred in what Don describes

How an engine block is "put together" is a question related to how a die casting foundry operates (and yes, I do know about that having spent 6 years as a machinist for Mercury Marine) but is totally unrelated to this incident.

It can explain where a big coolant mess came from, it doesn't however allow consideration that there could have been a smaller coolant leak which aerosolized coolant onto a hot exhaust part resulting in a fire all of which is totally unrelated to the basketball sized hole in the engine block. Failure analysis can not be based on one sole observation or the most obvious observation.

You seem to be hung up on the belief that this is/was the only way coolant could escape from an engine, that this was the only way coolant could escape from his engine.

Unlike you, I have no reason to believe he's lying.

At -some- point it was flooded, but that doesn't prove that that was the

-only- incident of coolant loss.

No, not like that at all. You on the other hand have taken the position that "wet streets cause rain."

Yes it is.

We should ask Don whether he was driving a fire sprinkler system when this all happened.

"Flooding" isn't aerosolized, is it?

It doesn't if you believe that that was the only coolant loss event during Dons winter home trip.

The fact that you insist that there could have only been one singular gush of coolant makes you irrelevant.

The NHTSA says different, case history WRT 80s era Ford E-350 van chassis ambulance conversions says different.

I've been following this thread from the very beginning, regardless, that still doesn't explain why you are attributing statement to me that I never made. When you state to me "you still have no evidence" over a point I didn't address, that is YOU putting words into my mouth. I couldn't care less if Dons engine threw a rod.

I don't care about the rod or the hole in the block.

If anyone had asked me in 1987 if engine coolant could burn and cause a fire, I'd have taken the exact position you are. Then I learned something.

Your exact words in reply to me were; "you still have no evidence that his engine had a thrown rod."

Looks to me like you think I said the engine threw a rod.

Really? I don't see a single mention of a rod, thrown or otherwise in either Dan's original post or in Don's original post where he describes the events that have sent you into a tizzy.

The only one confused here is you Jim. Blind dogma will do that...

Can you please give a link to a description of an ambulance coolant caught on fire. Please do not post links to ambulances that did not catch on fire. Whatever was done to the ones that didn't catch on fire. I would like to see a report of an actual fire not a report of there could have been a fire but never was.

I know what you were arguing. You were wrong. He said it happened suddenly with a bang. He felt the piece of metal that broke off hit the floor boards. He said that happened "immediately following". Your wrong the release of coolant was most definitely "sudden".

You just rewrote his story. But still in your version the catastrophic failure would still release all the antifreeze at once (minus the small amount needed for your beloved fire). If there was a fire before the bang that the sudden loss of coolant would have doused the fire.

Just about anything in the story taken in isolation could be true. But as a whole it doesn't add up. And even if you perform handstands in a futile attempt to get it to add up, the story still doesn't prove the point he was trying to make anyway.

Yes but since the "hole in the block" is and always has been the one and only topic under discussion. That makes your opinion irrelevant. Nothing but a distraction.

-jim

----== Posted via Pronews.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----

The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! >100,000Newsgroups

---= - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

Did you read this report? Nowhere in that report does it say anybody ever witnessed or was able to prove that an engine compartment fire was due to burning coolant.

You may have changed heater hoses believing that you were preventing a coolant fire, but you have no proof there ever was a single coolant fire. Ford voluntarily recalled and changed heater hoses after there were reports of fires. From what I read it wasn't clearly established what caused the fires. The document doesn't contain any actual documented results of any fire investigation.

The stated basis for inspecting the heater hoses was:

"some of these fires coincided with loss of coolant"

The report also said it was established thru laboratory tests that many of the vehicles had deteriorating heater hoses. The poor condition of the hoses was the real reason for the recall. I saw no documented evidence of any actual coolant fire.

My own personal experience is that it is practically impossible to get the ethylene glycol antifreeze mix used in motor vehicles to burn. I have seen a small leak in a heater hose spray antifreeze directly onto a cherry red exhaust manifold without igniting. That only produces steam - no fire.

-jim

Where is your proof

----== Posted via Pronews.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----

The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! >100,000Newsgroups

---= - Total Privacy via Encryption =---