Sunday I took the Mustang to my girlfriend's parent's house. As we're pulling onto their street I glance in my rearview mirror and think, "wow... that's an awful lot of white smoke..." I do a quick check of my gauges and nothing was awry except the water temp gauge in my a pillar. I thought that was kind of weird since I wasn't really experiencing any other problems but I figured the car HAS overheated before so it wasn't unheard of. We pull into her parent's driveway and white/gray smoke just starts rolling out from under the hood. I ALMOST just let it go and went inside thinking it was probably coolant boiling out and evaporating. Luckily though, I popped the hood and went to the front of the car. As soon as I put my hand under the hood I noticed it was definitely too warm. Then I noticed that it looked like the hood was steaming up on top, like there was a heat source being applied directly to the bottom. And then I noticed that there was a weird noise besides the normal sound of the turbo spinning down... it sure sounded like a fire.
So I opened the hood and looked for a moment in disbelief. If anyone has seen the movie Clerks II, it was a lot like in the beginning when Dante opens the Quick Stop and there's a huge fire going and he has to do a double take. Anyway, the flames are at least a foot high, coming out of the drivers side area. I never thought I'd say a foot high flame was big but coming out of your engine bay, it looked HUGE! By another stroke of luck, the garage door was open so I ran in and grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall. Ran back to the car, pulled the pin and gave it a quick shot. The fire went out immediately. It really almost felt like a waste to open the fire extiguisher for so little work so I squirted the area again. After everything cooled off my girlfriend's dad and I jacked up the car to inspect the damage and figure out what happened. After 2 years of the power steering line being run entirely too close to the turbo piping it looks like it finally got fatigued and cracked, releasing power steering fluid all over the driver's side turbo header and the downpipe. Not a good recipe. The engine bay is not particularly pretty and some of the insulation melted off of various wires, but all told the fire cost me $20 for a replacement hose and $13 to recharge the fire extinguisher. I can't believe how EXTREMELY lucky I was to have the fire when I did. Had I been anywhere else, there would be no car. I mean, imagine if I was still on 66 on my way there when it happened? By the time anyone got there to help it'd have been too late. That being said, I will be a lot more careful about where hoses are run. Additionally, I bought a 2 1/2 lb fire extiguisher while I was getting the other one recharged to carry around with me.
The pictures I've attached are of the hood and of the engine bay. You can see the soot that collected on the hood but I washed it off and it seems ok. The engine bay is going to need some work.
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Originally Posted by John4cam
Seriously though, glad to hear the car is ok and it was a cheap fix.
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