In my story below, the car involved isn't a TR, but many around the world at this site do have older vehicles and may wish to take a lesson from it. One car owner had a hard lesson learned last night.
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I initially purchased the fire extinguisher in my car because a local car club's show scoring & rules encouraging participants to carry a fire extinguisher in the cars. I thought it was a good idea, bought a few more small extinguishers for each car in the garage and hoped I never had to use these devices.
On Saturday night, the wife and I were returning from a nice dinner in Algonac, MI when we came upon a car pulling into the lot with orange sparks and a small glow from its under carriage. There was a plume of smoke above the lighted intersection from which that car had turned off M29. I thought that was too much smoke and orange light for a dragging tail pipe. So while I turned around in the next parking lot, I asked my wife to take our fire extinguisher out of the glove box.
In about the 45 seconds to turn around and get back to where the other vehicle was, the other car owner had the hood open, there were 3 foot flames coming from under the carburettor, all along the lower windscreen edge, and through the hood vents.
I initially thought the Kidde extinguisher (3lbs or 1.5kg 'ABC' type) was going to be useless, but surprisingly, it put out all the fuel burning in the engine compartment. The small Kidde extinguisher, intended for kitchen and small garage fires, had enough pressurized contents for about 10 seconds of use. I was impressed, even though I aimed the extinguisher at the left front lower shock tower and cowl panel, little licks of flame on the under side hood insulation and at the radiator hose connection to the radiator were smothered by the fire extinguisher's contents.
Even if the Kidde had more to give, it couldn't help further because the fire (I think) had started to burn into the A/C and interior heating ducts in the dash board. The interior was continuing to fill with thick smoke even though no flame was visible. A young fellow from a nearby party store showed up with a larger extinguisher and kept the engine compartment fire that re-ignited about a 1minute later from growing again.
Sadly, even though I responded within 1 minute and the fellow with a larger extinguisher within another minute...the Metalic green, 1969(maybe) Pontiac GTO had suffered major damage.[:(][V]
When I left the scene, the a fire truck crew decided their very large fire extinguisher wasn't going to be effective and they were pulling out the heavy water hose to douse the interior, dash board and maybe the engine compartment again.
As a result of this experience, I just purchased a medium sized fire extinguisher for my car, a Kidde 340 (15 lbs of fire suppressant?) to replace the spent extinguisher. Due to its size, it'll have to be stowed in the rear boot or trunk. Just like the first extinguisher,
I hope I don't have to use it.
For any older, sports or classic car owner who reads this, they should seriously consider inspecting their vehicle's entire fuel line route for potential leaks or hose cracks annually, and carry not a small extinguisher, but a medium sized extinguisher or few small ones at the very least. One little fire extinguisher isn't enough.
