farewell to the 80t

[Dan Simoes]

"Lee M. Levitt" wrote:
> > Luckily a nice man, retired fireman probably, ran out of his pickup with a
> huge
> > extinguisher and killed the fire after I popped the hood for him.
> 
> Did he ask you to pop the hood? I thought that the proper approach was to
> spray the extinguisher through the grille, that way giving less air to fuel
> the fire.

Alex had popped the hood and I sprayed into the crack between the hood
and fender.  The fireman had Alex actually lift the hood open, which was
possible because his extinguisher had much more oomph than mine (see,
size does matter after all).  In retrospect it was a risky move (the
hood was already so hot that paint had melted off) but it saved the
car.  I actually had nightmares later that night about Alex burning his
hands.

I'm not sure if halon is needed - both my extinguisher (to my surprise)
and the fireman's were discharging a dry powder.  I don't think this
would hurt any electronics.

Alex forgot one part of the story - when the fire was out, I asked the
cop if I could cut the ground wire on the battery "no, leave it for the
fire dept and step away from the car".  OK, fine.
Fire dept came, I repeated the request, but he starts cutting the
positive.  I pointed out the ground and he said "doesn't matter now".
OK... ZAP, ZAP - idiot grounds one of the positive cables, fire
reignites.
I looked at Alex and said loudly "like I said, he should cut the GROUND
wire".  With volunteer fireman, much like shopping at Home Depot, never
assume that the people working there actually know more than you.
(No disrespect to qualified volunteer firefighters out there, you do a
hell of a job).

My personal lessons learned from this little episode:

- if you are going to carry a fire extinguisher, and you should, make it
a big one.  The little ones won't be able to do much, but the big ones
may buy you enough time to either save the car, your stuff or someone
else.

- if you do a lot of mods on the car, have it insured for actual
replacement value.  Brandon Hull did on his eS2 and it paid off.

- I am considering adding a quick disconnect or switch to the battery
ground on my cars.  This is the second time I've seen the need to
quickly get the battery unplugged - the first time it happened I got 2nd
degree burns on my hand because the terminal was hot and I of course
yanked it with bare hands.  I think I've seen something like this in
Herrington or Griot's catalogs, designed for garage queen cars so it
won't drain the battery.  Anyone know what it is?

Like everyone said, the key is that Alex made it out alive.  
It's a shame about that car - it was keeping up with a 20v driven pretty
hard, and when it was on boost, was actually faster.

| Dan |