EdmontonCanada

In late fall of 2013 I had a braided stainless oil line make contact with the alternator output while at a stop light. It caused an instant fire.

When putting out the engine fire the extinguisher I had was powder-based (which was unbeknownst to me at the time).

My truck ran fine after repair for a few months but then started experiencing excessive blow by. When DFC disassembled my old motor today they saw that it was the fire extinguisher dust that wrecked my motor - wiping out the honing on the cylinder walls.

Lesson learned... Ensure all lines are properly secured and only carry Halon fire extinguishers.

soulezoo

Tough lesson.

Halon is greatly restricted by the EPA down here because of toxic side effects and ozone depletion and therefore not available to us regular guys.

We had a lot of 150lb bottles on the flightline though!

motrapper

How did the dust get into the motor past the air cleaner?
surely not thru the hole in the line?

EdmontonCanada

The fire was right below the filter and opened it up (melted it). The dealership should have known to send the turbo out for inspection and pull off the boost tube to look for powder debris, not slap on a new filter and replace the burned parts, then fire the truck up. I looked at the compressor after the fire and it was coated with fire retardant. So I have fees for turbo cleaning too.

I called insurance and I'm covered for fire on my truck. It'll be interesting to see what the adjuster does. Here's to hoping I get a new engine paid for. God knows we pay enough money for insurance...

rockcrawler304

Best of luck!

BroncoAZ

Although only a small one, I have a 1.4 lb halotron fire extinguisher bolted to my dashboard down below near the cup holders. It was expensive for the size, but there is no powder. This is the one I have.


I may buy a larger halotron unit at some point, but they are spendy. I also keep a dry chemical extinguisher in the bed.

Busboy

Some years ago we had an aircraft run out of fuel in flight, as much as they tried the flight crew couldn't make the closest airport and feared crashing in the city so had decided to ditch into a lake. As they descended the F/O remembered an airfield where he had done his flight training and pointed the B767 in that direction. One of the twin runways had been newly resurfaced and was now a drag strip with an event going on, from the air this looked like the active runway so they landed on it chasing two young kids on bikes down the runway, nose gear collapsed and rubbed the runway causing a fire. Everyone came down the slides with minor injuries and the car race guys put out the fire using dry chemical extinguishers and saved the aircraft, hero's. However the dry chemicals corroded the gold plated terminals on every single wire in the electronics bay, aircraft out of service for almost a year with millions of dollars damage. Since then I carry a halon in every vehicle, along with dry chem in the truck and RV trailer. I posted this as the OP is from Edmonton and may remember the incident.

Sam9290

This is good information to know, I will be ordering the 1.4 halotron fire extinguisher for my truck. I hope that I never have an occasion to use it. Thanks to all who posted this information about using dry chemical fire extinguishers to engine fires.