Last night I parked the Imp in the driveway after
returning home from work. Locked her up and took a
step back to admire the car in the amber glow of the
corner street light. What a thing of beauty.
I went in the house, kissed the wife hello, and began
gethering up the trash from various household trash
cans, so I could roll the can out to the curb for
pick-up this morning. Walked out of the house, bag in
hand, grabbed the can and started rolling it toward
the curb.
As I rolled past the Imp, I noticed what I thought was
steam billowing up from under the hood, and figured
that my radiator cap must have blown after I went in
the house. Dropped the can at the curb and went to
investigate...
As I approached the car, I noticed a strange glow on
the garage door that seemed to be coming through the
grill of the Imp. It didn't take long to do the math
that the steam was actually smoke and the Imp was on
fire! Panic. I ran in the house, grabbed the fire
extinguisher and ran back out, leaving my wife to
wonder what the hell was going on.
Threw open the driver's side door, fumbled under the
dash for the hood release for what seemed like an
eternity, but was probably only a second or two, and
popped the hood. My air cleaner was burning and maybe
a couple other areas around the carb. Shot it with the
extinguisher and it went right out. Grabbed the hose
and sprayed it down good with a generous amount of
water to cool it, and try to wash away the
extinguishing agent.
It was dark and it was late, so, once I was satisfied
the fire was out for good, I went to bed.
In the early morning light, this morning when I left
for work, I tried to survey the damage. Things looked
remarkable good, under the hood, considering it had
been on fire. Afew melted vaccuum hoses, some
blistered paint, alot of smoke stains, and the hot
spots shoing in the paint on the hood, but all in all,
very minor. I will have to do a more thorough
inspection of damage this afternoon, but I was
relieved this morning.
I can only assume that the carb, which has been in
need of a rebuild for as long as I've owned the car,
must have overflowed and spilled over onto the motor,
and caught on fire, which in turn caught the paint on
the air cleaner on fire, and so it went...
Thank God for trash day. I never thought I'd say that,
but if it weren't for my chore of dragging that big
trash can to the curb every Wednesday night, I
wouldn't have ever noticed the car was burning until I
saw the fire engines outside my house. Which would
have certainly been too late.
Another happy ending to this story is that my mind has
been made up to keep, and restore the car. I had been
debating for a long time whether or not to sell the
car and it's 65 parts car, and had more or less
decided that they would have to go. We have a baby on
the way, and I have too many projects, and I could
sure use the money. But then driving the car recently,
I started to question whether or not I actually wanted
to sell it. This fire clinched it for me. The way I
see it, I won't be able to get what I want to get out
of a burned car, so before I sold it I would have to
do some repairs and paint. I figure if I'm gonna go
that far, I may as well just build the car and keep
it. No point in building it to sell it, right?
So there is, oddly enough a happy ending to the story
of my car catching on fire...
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