Fire extiguishers for your cars

[wdfifteen]

What are you all using?
I need to upgrade the 15 year old equipment in my air cooled EPA nightmares.

[Scott Douglas]

I recently had a look at our house extinguishers when my son asked if I still had the one he bought for his first car oh so many years ago.

Turned out, all of ours were so old they weren't rechargeable any more.
The cost of a Halon has gone way up compared to when I bought one for my 912.

I replaced all our house extinguishers with new ones. Spent a good amount of money but figure it's better to have one that works when you need it to work.

We're taking the old ones down to my son's place this weekend to try them out since he has an open area that we won't have to worry about cleaning up later after we're done.
I think I'd still go with Halon for an old car. It'd be pricey but the ease of cleanup would be worth it if it were ever used on the car.

[Zeke]

Halon from the race car in the Boxster trunk along with an ABC. ABC and FireAid in the house, especially in the kitchen with the big Wolf. ABC near the water heater (just handy, no more).
Big ABC in the garage/shop and smaller ABC on the welding cart.

There are some more, just can't think of them all (not a good thing).

[Dansvan]

https://www.cbperformance.com/product-p/blazecut.htm

Seems pretty good

[Otter74]

I recently got an Element for each of my three old cars. I always had an ordinary small ABC extinguisher in the 911 and it saved the day when I had a small fuel fire after changing an injector. I also just got ABC extinguishers to keep in each garage.

[911boost]

I had a Rennline mount for my 964T, I currently do not have one in the 997, this is a good reminder to take care of that.

[Arizona_928]

Not to go against the grain, but the ABC is overkill for automotive applications. You won't have the c component; no electrical... Mostly just burning plastics and hydrocarbon fuels. So A&B foam would be my choice due to the lower chance of reignition.

[KevinTodd]

Element in every car.

[slow&rusty]

I carry one of these in the car.

[unclebilly]

Here are 5 data points that I can offer from personal experience…

1. We had a halon system in the chump 911. When an oil line blew during a 24 hour race at Spokane , we used it and it worked to extinguish the car with minor damage. We repaired the line and went back racing. I’m not sure any other system would have allowed for that.

2. My Miata and Ford have water based systems. We intentionally pulled the pin on the Ford after a race at Laguna Seca and it made a hell of a mess. We also determined we needed to re aim some of the nozzles.

3. I have a regular fire extinguisher in my Tundra behind the seat. You need to take these out and shake them periodically otherwise the powder settles on the low side and compacts itself from the gentle vibration of driving. At work we had fire extinguishers on all of our trucks and equipment. We found that in some cases, a fire extinguisher wouldn’t work when needed despite being fully charged. The propellant would come out but no powder.

4 & 5. I have had a powder extinguisher discharge twice in the cab of 2 of my vehicles on 2 miserable occasions. The first time was in my Dodge truck at a tractor pull even that I won’t with that truck in 2001. The second time was when I dropped my backpack onto the fire extinguisher in my Mack gravel truck. The weight of the back pack held the lever down… what a f’ing mess.

[blucille]

I recently had to use my element extinguishers on my 83 911 after I was rear ended.

It far exceeded my expectations. Saved the car. Although it was totaled from the impact the 3.6 was saved and will live on.

Please note. Do the homework ahead of time. I watched some YouTube clips and read the instructions when I bought it.

The fire was due to a severed fuel line due to the impact. I was driving in a group and one driver brought over his halon bottle which fizzled out quickly.

Another brought over an element, yanked off the cap and threw it on the ground. That’s a mistake. You need the cap to start the process.

Overall, I was happy to have 2 but didn’t need the second.

Oddly, I sent an email to the element ‘contact us’ on their website with photos and writing a grateful testimonial and never heard back. I guess business is good.

[GH85Carrera]

Yeas ago, I was in my 914 and at an intersection in an industrial area the Pinto in front of me at the light started burning. I backed my 914 up and ran towards the burning car with my extinguisher. The owner held up his hand and said stop right there, turned to his burning car and yelled burn baby burn you lousy POS and did a happy dance. I got back in my car and drove off in a different direction.

[stealthn]

Elements in all our cars, just because it’s compact and lasts longer than a bottle during discharge.

[masraum]

Make sure that whatever you get is rated for the kinds of fires that you'd have in a car. Many years ago, I worked retail. We had fire extinguishers in our store, for the store. On multiple occasions, folks would have car fires in the parking lot or on the road in front of the store. The fire extinguishers for the store did absolutely nothing for the car fires.

After a couple of times trying to put out car fires and the store having to pay to get the extinguishers refilled, we stopped trying. People would be distraught and angry that we wouldn't even try.

[911 Rod]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Yeas ago, I was in my 914 and at an intersection in an industrial area the Pinto in front of me at the light started burning. I backed my 914 up and ran towards the burning car with my extinguisher. The owner held up his hand and said stop right there, turned to his burning car and yelled burn baby burn you lousy POS and did a happy dance. I got back in my car and drove off in a different direction.

That's some funny s##t there!

[masraum]

Originally Posted by unclebilly

4 & 5. I have had a powder extinguisher discharge twice in the cab of 2 of my vehicles on 2 miserable occasions. The first time was in my Dodge truck at a tractor pull even that I won’t with that truck in 2001. The second time was when I dropped my backpack onto the fire extinguisher in my Mack gravel truck. The weight of the back pack held the lever down… what a f’ing mess.

Again in the retail job (FLAPS), one of the guys was leaving, moving away, and the guys wanted to prank him. They waited for him to go to the bathroom, gave him a few secs to take a seat, and then sprayed the contents of a powder extinguisher under the door. That powder gets everywhere, but they did a pretty good job of cleaning it up.

[GH85Carrera]

Our local fire department would get bored or something, and do fire safety inspection for commercial buildings. A fire truck pulls up out front, and the entire team comes in in full bunker suits. They look for fire extinguishers, and the date tags and any fire hazards.

They asked me what steps we take in case of fire, and I said big ones towards the doors yelling call 911 we have a fire. They did not think it was as funny as I did.

One day at the photo lab where I worked I pull up in the back in my parking spot and it sounded like a big truck was backing up. I walked to the building and knew it was the multiple smoke detectors. I got inside and there was a layer of smoke from the ceiling down about 18 inches.

I ducked way down, and duck walked to the back and saw one of the processors that was on a timer to come on to be warmed up and ready by opening had turned on as designed. It was billowing smoke. The issue was the tank of chemicals it was to heat up was empty from maintenance the afternoon before. It should have been turned off at the wall with the electrical disconnect and not just the timer on off switch. The heater designed to heat 27 gallons of liquid had burned and melted the plastic tank walls. I killed it and started opening doors and the fire department arrived. The set up some huge fans to pump the smoke out and check out the processor was off.

The employee that screw up was apologetic. We had to find a guy to weld plastic to rebuild the processor tank.

It was a big mess and the 5,000 square foot building stunk of burned plastic for weeks.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by blucille

I recently had to use my element extinguishers on my 83 911 after I was rear ended.

It far exceeded my expectations. Saved the car. Although it was totaled from the impact the 3.6 was saved and will live on.

I worked out OK for you huh?
The Element isn't very impressive in the reviews I've watched of people actually putting out fires with one.
One guy put a bunch of under-hood type parts (radiator hose, fuel lines, plastic shields etc) in a barrel and tossed in a cup of gasoline and lit it. The Element wouldn't put it out. In every review the operator had to get very close to the fire to get the Element discharge into the fire. A little bit of wind blew the discharge away before it got to the fire. I really like the form factor, and they do discharge for a long, long time though. They are so small it would be good to keep one in the car to back up a 2 1/2 pound dry chemical extinguisher.

[Scott Douglas]

These are all the old ones I replaced a couple months ago.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Our local fire department would get bored or something, and do fire safety inspection for commercial buildings.

They used to do that to us. The fire department is great when you need them, but a bunch of officious jerks when you don't. It my building it didn't matter what we had going on - deadlines, meetings, lunch - didn't matter, they barged in and checked all the exit lights and fire extinguishers while keeping a running commentary to us about what they did or did not find. I told them to leave us alone, do their inspection, and send us a report.
We once had a false alarm and we KNEW it was a false alarm. My secretary turned the alarm off so we could all get back to work. The FD showed up and this junior fireman chewed her out for turning off the alarm, to the point that she was in tears. I read the riot act to the fire chief and told him if that ******* showed up at my building again I would set HIM on fire.