almost blew my head off!!!
 

I went to look at an '86 928 today that hasn't run in a couple of years, the owner said it was running fine but he had not been using it so only started it occasionally until once when it did not start. He bought a 968 and was living out of town so the car was just sitting for close to a couple years now. Well, of course it wouldn't start so we opened the airbox and i sprayed in starter fluid as the owner cranked the engine, it seemed to almost start several times until, as i was spraying in the starter fluid... BOOOM!!! I am not kidding the sound deafened me and sent me backwards. When i moved back to look under the hood, both of the air inlet boxes on the sides of the intake manifolds had blown completely off at the place where they clamp onto the the intake pipes, the insulation from the hood was blown off and all over the place, a small pipe at the back of one of the side airboxes was broken off, and i was completely disoriented. What the heck could have happened? anybody know?

Hot wire and flammable fluids don't mix. Not a good idea to do this

Wow! You're lucky you didn't get hurt.

Is it any wonder ER's are a 24/7 operation?

Dang lucky, IMO!
Doc :eek:

WOW. you guys are scaring me, it's amazing dangerous not knowing something can be! What do you mean by "hot wire"?

928's have Motronic fuel injection system that has a heated platinum wire in the air mass flow sensor right after the air filter in the intake pipes area. Squirting flammable liquids and air into the intake when the wire is glowing hot results in ignition of the intake mixture so that's why the charge blew up the box and nearly took your head off.:rolleyes:

So I'm getting don't do this right?
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A little starting fluid, applied while cranking, just to see if that kicks it over isn't a totally bad idea. Trying to clear the injectors for 5 minutes maybe not so good of an idea.

actually the 85/86 engines do this from time to time, no harm, just put the boxes back on and your good to go.

BTW the hot wire in the MAF doesnt cause this, I have standalone with MAP sensor on my engine and it did it that way too.

Ha, I blew my side plenums off the first time I hit 8psi on the turbo car, scared the crap out of me...going sideways at 60mph & then BOOM! (engine die). Ha..

Mark (glad you're safe). PS: was this car a 5-speed? Looking for a non-running 5-speed BW 32v car.

NO, it's an auto, which i'm not crazy about. thx for all the info, interesting stuff.

Bad plug wires can cause a backfire by leaking over to another sparkplug in a cylinder with the intake valve open.

you know contrary to popular myth you're only suppose to use a little squirt of that ether and you'll actually get better results then dumping half the can in there