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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Plumbed in extinguisher in a road car

Does anyone have a plumbed in extinguisher in a road car?

If so, which model and where have you sited the bottle.

Presumably it's a bit silly to put the bottle in the engine bay.
Jeremy Cogman

Hmm, should have googled this first as it seems they are all AFFF and not that good at stopping a fire just retarding it to facilitate escape.

I'd still welcome people's thoughts though.
Jeremy Cogman

Dude -
Replace your fuel hoses and take some pills,

FRM
FR Millmore

my mate run an extinguisher company and he says even the good sized (hand held) ones are like peeing in the sea, might put your fag out if it hasn't landed on anything flamable

I wonder, how do you test the system, do you check it each year

is it plumb in across the whole car, what about the areas it misses

our cars are mostly metal by firbreglass goes up quite easily

assuming it's for road use, if you're worried buy an extinguisher, they cost little and if it keeps you happy it's money well spent
Nigel Atkins

I dropped one on the garage floor once, setting it off by mistake. It was not that old and the guage was in the green where it should be. Nigels description is about right; the windscreen washer was more powerful.
John Collinson

FR, so you've never had a loom fire then, trust me you want an extinguisher.

I've used a 600g hand held powder one in the past and it did the job very well but this was not on petrol, just a burning loom. I now carry two 800g but it would be nice to put out an engine bay fire without lifting the lid.
Jeremy Cogman

unless you've got a track type car I think your experience may be tilting your views and needs, but hey I can get worried watch something about heights on TV

in the last 6 years I've had petrol leaks under the bonnet around the carbs a few times due mainly to today's rubbish rubber (I may have mentioned this before) but personally I've never felt the need to fit an extinguisher although I once had a fibreglass car with one fitted, hardly the size of a coke bottle and fitted on the floor just in front of the passenger seat so not much use at all

you probably need the racey boys and girls along to tell you about what you want to know
Nigel Atkins

Jeremy-
I have, and I say your money is far better spent improving the wiring, with everything fused and a battery shutoff switch. And a nice point about handheld extinguishers, you can point them where needed, at any time, even to rescuing the damsel in distress along the highway.
Don't be selfish.

FRM
FR Millmore

Inertia fuel pump cutoff is a good preventative measure.
Trevor Jessie

You can also get a oil pressure fuel pump cut off or just put in a full battery isolator cut out. In my experience the only thing that used to put out petrol / oil fires was the 'Halon' type which have been banned. The motorsport fully plumbed in are as said before to allow time to get out before your flameproofs give up. You then rely on marshalls with large extinguishers to put the car out if they havn't fallen over running through a gravel trap ;-).
I do carry a small extinguisher but its like peeing in the wind for fuel / oil.
Ed
Ed H

In motorsport the marshals are trained to fight fire by knocking it down with powder and following on with foam.

Racing cars have foam only extinguishers and I've seen quite a few fired by accident in scrutineering.

In my house I have a dry powder in the kitchen and when it goes out of date it goes down the garage and the very out of date dry powder extinguisher from the kitchen gets fired. I let my girls fire off the last dry powder I had on a fire in a metal tray that consisted of newspaper and brake fluid. After they'd have several goes at putting out the fire and my re-lighting it I found that it re-ignited itself. I think a foam would have put the fire out and kept it out which is of course how foam is meant to work.

I've seen a lot of racing car fires and the most interesting thing is that as with any fire once that fire has got a hold it becames increasingly more difficult to put out even by the fire truck. I even saw one Lotus re-ignite on the back of the recovery truck going down the pit lane.

So my opinion is that having a fire extinguisher in your Spridget might or might not put our a fire depending on how big the fire is at the time you fired the extinguisher bottle and what was burning (wiring harness, fibreglass, oil, brake fluid or fuel). It will however, without fail buy you some time to get out of the car or give the Fire Brigade time on the road to attend your vehicle fire. It could make the difference between the Brigade being able to save your car or not.

You could carry dry powder and foam in your car if you wanted and although dry powder used to be specifically banned from racing cars that regulation no longer appears to be in the blue book. A lot of the small extinguishers sold in Halfords are really small but still better than nothing.

As to where to put a fire extinguisher in a car I believe there are books with photos in them..... or have a look in the paddock at any race meeting and see who seems to have the best solution.

In my road car while being fanatical about weight saving I have both plumbed in and hand held fire extinguishers as well as a circuit breaker/electrical cut-off (ignition, fuel pumps, everything!).

Finally, those AFFF fire extinguishers don't get FIA approved for nothing and have to prove to FIA officials in a practical demonstration that they can put out a fire. The same goes for modern gas extinguishers.
Daniel Thirteen-Twelve

Just my 5p worth:
We have AFFF in the rally midget, bottle sits across the rear shelf and plumbed in lines run to nozzles in the engine bay.
AFFF is VERY good on oil fires, very good on carbonaceous and not bad on low volt electrics (despite what it says on the instructions). It also washes off easily. Will need recharging (will be dated) over the years and make sure the bottle pressure stays in the green.

Dry powder is good at making a mess and the bottle MUST be given a good shake every now and then otherwise it compacts down and will not work.

Gasseous systems - not much use for a car as will dissipate quickly through the holes in the engine bay...and does not have much cooling effect.

Just my view but I do teach firefighting at the RN school of FF&DC Phoenix..
d brenchley

Interesting
The minimum requirement for club level competition cars in Aust. is a 1kg dry powder extinguisher mounted inside the car within the driver's reach with the seatbelt on.
For Targa type events the requirement increases to 2kg either as a 2kg extinguisher or as most competitors prefer , two 1kg units
Personally, for a road car my choice is a 1kg unit accross the floor in front of the driver's seat. It's easy to get at and portable. A plumbed in system is as mentioned above - designed to give you enough time to escape your burning race car' The nozzles are usually in the engine bay and around the driver.
For a road car you need to be able to point your extinguisher at the fire source not just a general area ,
Willy

One little point is, if you do go for a dry powder unit, remove it from it's mounting every couple of months and give it a good shake up to keep the powder nice and loose, this in itself is a bit harder to do if you have your extinguisher mounted up as a plumbed in unit and I suspect is why they fail sometimes as the powdes get compressed down from constant jiggling---------
William Revit

This thread was discussed between 25/07/2012 and 26/07/2012

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

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