Yesterday, despite the amazing amount of power I was enjoying, I found out the hard way that my heavily-fiberglas-insulated silicone drain lines (from ATP, 5/8" high temperature silicone hose) won't stand up to the exhaust temps I am seeing. The fiberglas melted and ignited my rear turbo oil drain line right where it passes over the front turbo downpipe. There was much smoke and flames and noxious fumes from burning silicone. Fortunately we were pulling into the driveway as it started and my friend jumped out and grabbed the extinguisher as I popped the hood. Nothing was damaged except for the insulation I had on the turbos and the drain line itself, and one vacuum hose. It could have been much, much worse.

Lessons learned:

- Take the time to do hard lines. Steel doesn't burn quite as easily.
- Keep an extinguisher in your garage and in your car.

What's funny is I had just bought a spare extinguisher the same day. An omen I suppose. I have to get all the dry-chem stuff cleaned up; that crap gets everywhere. I may pull the turbos and ceramic the manifold... and I have to find some small diameter bends to fab up a hard drain line for the rear.

A few pics:

 

oo man thank god

glad it didnt ruin all your hard work with those twins

GL man

 

you are one lucky guy

 

no ****....i think i would have cried for you if your project would have been ruined

 

Wow, i think i may go buy an extinguisher tomorrow

 

Good to see it was just minor .

 

What estinguisher are you using in your car? Something better then that APC crap or whatever it is I hope.

 

You can find small auto sized ones from major extinguisher manufacturers like Kidde. They come with a nice plastic mount.

The one I had to use yesterday was a full-size dry chem one that I keep in my garage.

 

That really sucks considering you just got it running not to long ago. Atleast everythings ok though, could have been alot worse!

-Alex

 

very good lesson. i personally will look to purchase one before summer comes around.

for now the rain will be last resort.

mikey

 

Where can you even buy a good extinguisher? I need to get one for my car here soon. Do they have them at like Home Depot or somethin?
Austin

 

Home depot, Lowe's, etc... even wal-mart. Extinguishers are pretty standardized... and rain won't cut it, Spirit. I estimate the surface temp of those runners was about 1500 degF. The insulation I was using is supposed to be rated to 1800 degF... unfortunately I didn't have any of the knitted insulation on that part. That stuff is very thick and is rated for 2200 degF.

 

Wow, lucky man, thank God you didn't get alot of damage...

turbodrx7
Home Depot sells car size extinguishers for like 10-12 bux, well worth the money, I keep 1 in my car allways.

 

this has inspired me to get a new extinguisher, i bought one like 3 years ago and it ran out of pressure or whatever a long time ago....

 

Could also have been coolant that may have spilled into the insulation and ignited.

Yeah, whenever you do custom work like this, problems like this are bound to crop up. Glad it got put out before it became a REAL problem!

Dale

 

Man, sorry to hear about that...

 

yeah i was just kidding about the rain.. reason for the wait till summer time is because i will have a bit more mods by then and will be driving a lot more often when the rain is gone..

 

Why not just get the manifold, downpipe, and both turbo exhaust housings ceramic coated? There is a guy near my house that has a NA 69 Camero drag car that runs 9's. His manifold is coated with something(not sure of the brand but it was a white color coating). A couple weeks ago he was doing some adjustments to the engine while it was idleing for nearly 30min. After he shut off the engine, I could physically touch the manifold(quicky) with my bare had. I couldn't believe how well that **** worked.

 

Ya, that's why I said

I have done that ceramic on other turbo cars in the past and it does work well. Of course the down side is exhaust temps on an idling chevy and the insane temps from a turbo rotary do not equate. I had problems with the stuff cracking when I was running it on a 1.8L honda turbo manifold... I also had problems with it corroding underneath the ceramic. Maybe that's due to the method of application, dunno... That ceramic was a dark grey; I think it was jet-hot.


^^ Ewwww, pistons...

 

I am getting an extinguisher. Period.

 

I carry the little bitty car fire extinguisher from Wal-Mart and it saved my car once when a fuel line cracked and started a fire. Mine is mounted in the bottom of the passenger side bin where I can get to it quickly. Without the extinguisher that day my car would certainly have burnt to the ground as high pressure fuel continued to squirt on a hot engine even after it was shutoff.

My car caught fire once

 

After seeing this person's car explode on the highway I bought mine that exact day from ebay, they got some nice ones for good price.

 

Glad to know it's still running.