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Having completed my MkIV Roadster after one year of building in November, 2011, I had retrieved it three weeks ago from a spectacular job that Ron Randall did at Metalmorphous and was looking forward to a nice season of driving with it. Unfortunately, that came to a very abrupt end yesterday. Fortunately nobody was hurt.
I had been driving it on and off for about an hour and had picked up a friend to go for a ride while I went and got some gas (it had about 1/8-1/4 tank). On the way, I accelerated from a stop to about 30Mph and on the way, at about 2500 RPM in first gear, it hesitated and would not respond to the accelerator pedal. It then sputtered a little as if it was going to stall. It languished along like this for about a block, and then stalled altogether. I pulled over, and there was a strong smell of gas. I assumed that I had somehow flooded the engine (which was in retrospect impossible because it is fuel injected) or that there had been some major failure of the computer or one of the nozzles that would have allowed it to flood. I waited 10 or 15 seconds and then started it up again and it put it in gear. While it was somewhat more responsive, it wasn't behaving properly and began sputtering again. I then began to think that maybe it was out of gas (as if the gauge wasn't calibrated properly at the low end) so I decided to head for home. As I pulled into a turn, it stalled again. As I tried to start it, smoke began to form under the hood followed quickly by a flame. My passenger and I immediately exited the car and stood and watched it burn while we called 911 and waited for the fire trucks. The car is completely totaled. While the fire did not spread to the remainder of the car past the firewall, the water damage and the smoke damage was enough to ruin the interior.
Hours later, after collecting my thoughts and speaking to friends about it, I began to suspect that this could only have been caused by a failed fuel line. As I had fabricated most of the fuel lines, I was distraught over the possibility that a manufacturing error on my part had led to this. I went to the yard where the car is and looked at every fuel line. All of the lines that I fabricated were completely intact. Some had soot on them, but they were all tight, secure, and without any outside evidence of damage. The one line that I did NOT fabricate, the line that connects the fuel rails in my Mass-Flo fuel injection system, was completely obliterated. Looking at the char pattern of the engine compartment, it seems clear that the epicenter of the fire was in the region of the distributor, where this fuel line existed. Worse, while both fittings were still tightly attached to the fuel rails, one side contained remnants of the braided steel line within the fitting whereas the other side did not. I interpret this as a a failure of the line at the connection between the braided steel hose and the fitting - something that was fabricated by my engine builder (I live in NJ and due to emission laws, I had to hire somebody to build me an engine based on a pre-1973 block - in my case a 1969 Boss 302).
See my blog at
http://factory5roadster.wordpress.co...shed-for-good/ for pictures of this.
My overall reaction to this is that the fun in this project is in the build process and the achievement of finishing it. Once it's done, it's just a car - a thing like everything else. While I am very disappointed (and a little angry at the engine builder) I am not depressed or upset. I have nothing but VERY POSITIVE things to say about Factory Five, the fine quality of the kit, the personnel, and the end product. If I decide to build another one, I wouldn't dream of doing it any other way (I cant imagine I wont be on the phone with them tomorrow).
That said, there are two important lessons I would like to pass on. First, don't carry a fire extinguisher with the hope of trying to put out this kind of fire. I didn't have one and I'm glad I didn't. Had I, I might have been tempted to open the hood and use it, exposing my face to an undoubtedly large fireball and inherent injuries. Second, and most important, TRUST NO ONE. I have now built an airplane and a car. In both cases, there were components or subsections that I farmed out- instrument panel, car engine, paint, etc - all things that I did not have the expertise to do myself. In all of those cases, I was always struck by how there was a lack of attention to certain details and an occasional carelessness that was a far cry from the meticulousness with which I approach my building and workmanship, and a standard of acceptability which was a far cry from the standards that I set fr myself. I'm not talking about little picky details here; I'm talking more about major, obvious deficiencies. I have seen this time, and time again, and it bolsters my belief that building can be done very safely, so long as you know your limitations and are honest with yourself. However, I am also a believer in the 'pack your own parachute' mentality, the corollary of which is that others will NEVER (no matter how much money you throw at them) build something with the same philosophy as you will. I, quite literally, got burned on this.
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Originally Posted by Jonweisw
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