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Garage safety

Saturday, I was working on my '69 Firebird, trying to get it back on the road after letting the project sit for a while. Unnoticed, it sprung a fuel leak out of the carburetor, and dumped a couple pints on the engine and underneath the car. That, coupled with a backfire through the carb, caused an immense fireball that enveloped the entire engine compartment, and looked to be growing enough to destroy the car, and probably the nearby house & garage.

Fortunately, I had bought a pretty good fire extinguisher a few years back, and mounted it in a convenient location in the garage. It put the fire out in one blast, and except for melting the electric choke wires, and a place on the hood where the heat caused the paint to melt, not much damage was done.

Just wanted to remind everyone to make sure they have a usable fire extinguisher handy if they're woking on their cars - in this case, having one handy made the difference between some minor damage and a real disaster.

Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR Control-G Consultants snipped-for-privacy@houston.rr.com

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Lee Gleason
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Thanks for the tip.

Reply to
Michael

Just curious.....

....as long as we are talking about preventing as much damage as possible in the event of a fire....

How many of you who are working around flammable liquids and/or welding and/or any other potential fire situation wear either all cotton or flame-retardant clothing?

If you are wearing plastic clothing - i.e. polyester, nylon, dacron, etc. - you are asking for a particularly nasty burn should you be exposed to any sort of major flame.

Cotton will simply burn and flake off you while the plastic clothing - even a percentage plastic - will melt ONTO and INTO your skin.

In any fire that burns your cotton clothing away, you will probably suffer a burn of some sort, but nowhere near as severe as one suffered from melting plastic clothing.

I know because two of my friends suffered this fate in separate incidents.

These uniform companies that sell polyester clothing to shops that present true fire hazard conditions ought to be strung up.

I wear nothing but cotton in my own shop, and have thrown out uniform salesman who cannot recommend the proper uniforms for the conditions that exist in my automotive fabrication shop.

Bob Paulin - R.A.C.E. Chassis Setup & Dial-in Services

Lee Gleason wrote in article ...

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Bob Paulin

This sounds familiar. Last August I improperly installed a fuel pressure gauge onto the fuel line. Instead of using the proper pipe barb fittings, I went with whatever was in the can of brass fittings and used threaded ends (stupid). Naturally the stretched hose ruptured near the fittings, and gas leaked everywhere on a hot engine block 20 miles into a test drive. The stalling car and "zero" on the FP gauge was a dead giveaway, heh. I don't think I ever ran faster in my life.

Luckily it was a windy day, and it evaporated real fast. I was 20 miles from home, but had the common sense to bring tools. So I removed the gauge & put the old tube on the fuel injector assembly.

The second time around I used the proper 5/16" pipe barbs to a 1/8" T-fitting, plus liberal amounts of teflon sealant. And also installed TWO pairs of hose clamps ;) no leaks since, but I leaned that playing with high-pressure fuel is not something you jury-rig and hope it works.

Dan

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