We still don't know exactly what happened, and it's been a week.
So calling the EF CSI team:
What can happen to a car standing still for an hour that makes it explode?
While I had my nice week off from work, a car exploded in the garage of my office. I was a bit shocked to hear this. Apparently, the car was driven there, left alone and about one hour later it exploded.
Calling Assasin!
1. if it contains a bomb.
2. if it is leaking fuel
3. if it is a female car and a male car is just about to propose to it in the rain.
slow fire
petrol leak and ignition form other source
those gpl petrol tanks can explode and are not allowed in underground parkings
Maybe smoked a cig and it flew back into the backseat without realizing.
tons of little thinks
Fuel vapour escaping and building up coupled with a spark from faulty electrics would do it. Highly unlikely that these 2 faults would occur at the same time, but not beyond the realms of possibility.
Or the male car doesn't complement her on her new paintjob (which looks exactly like her last paintjob)
Saw one at Gatwick a few Sundays back. It was on fire , and then boom, the petrol tank went up.
Ignoring the obvious, such as film crews/stunts or the car containing explosive material not normally carried in a car, the only other candidate is a petrol tank leak and something to ignite it, or a badly fitted LPG tank and something to ignite that. Sorry if I am stating the obvious ?
Cars retain a lot of heat for a long time after the engine is switched off, plus any nearby spark is going to ignite leaking fuels etc.
I doubt there could have been a spark an hour later, but most fuel injected cars keep pressure on the fuel system after shutdown. With a cracked injector this could leak a decent amount of fuel... but even if there was a spark there would be a nice fire before the explosion, which would have gotten some attention long before things blew up. Curious situation...
Did it actually "explode" into flames etc or just a loud bang?
The battery could have exploded. I see that happen many moons ago, and that makes a huge bang. Not nice to get caught next to an exploding one.
Otherwise, faulty electrics to create the fire and fuel somehow
I wasn't there, but got some 'safty-blahblahblah' email from work to all employers and there they wrote the words car exploded.
I asked the guys at my office (car exploded 2 floors below us) and they said they didn't notice anything until they were told to leave the building, and when they were allowed to come back they could smell the smoke.
I called my friend with the Houston Fire Department and asked him the question. In roughly 85% of the cases it is brought on by a slow process that is not seen very easily. There is usually a short somewhere in the vehicles fuel delivery electrics. If it was a very rapid process like described here, probably a fuel pump/injector short was involved. Statistically speaking, French and Italian cars are especially prone to this condition.
Over 20 Lamborghini Gallardos have gone up in flames since production started in '05 from faulty fuel pumps, and in the nineties, several Renaults and Citroens became "carbeques" due to faulty injector harnesses. Fortunately no one has been seriously hurt in any of these incidents. Marshmallows anyone? Thanks M
The Lamborghini Gallardo has a bad reputation regarding this.
Just have a look on google images
I was hoping for more dramatic and exciting suggestions than fuel leak TBH.
Where are the conspiracy theories?
You know, we need a security guard by our entrance to protect the company from all the angry hippies that are attacking the pharma companies to save the whales or what ever.
No chance it was a hippie terrorist with a bomb?
[QUOTE=Begga;842332]QUOTE]
I've witnessed car bombs go off in both Pretoria and Armagh... You will know when one of those goes off... there won't be a window intact for miles... Besides, a hippy car bomb is most likely to shower you with arnica and calendula and whimper rather than bang.
S'cuse ma ignorance but what does LPG stand f or?
If you're working for a pharma, it could be one of the cranks who thought the swine flu vaccine had been engineered to kill us all, or put us in concentration camps, I don't remember the exact details. Something to do with military sites at stations that had barbed wire fences that pointed out, not in, and plastic coffins.
Some guy posted about here on this very forum, so it must have been well researched.
I have seen cars burning (no Lambos though): Cars, even with fuel leaks or fuel pumps broken typically do not explode. They burn. I once watched one burning for a couple of minutes till the fire brigade had it under control.
Explosions need either explosives or a fuel air mix, preferably under pressure (just as you engine...). (Or a magnesium chassis as in the Le Mans massacre in the 50s)
Are you sure that the car exploded and not simply burned down?
You can blow up an engine by running it for a few minutes without oil.
You can also do as I did once, and drive from Copenhagen to Paris in a 20 year old Mini . I was a student back then, and while still in paris, it started to consume a lot more oil than normal. Then on the way home (I drove it, i could not afford to have it transported), it became noisier and noisier as if one of the pistons was hitting one end of the cylinders repeatedly. When we hit the Dutch-German border, we had to shout to each other in the car, but it was not until we were back in Copenhagen, and 2-3 km from home, it said "BANG", it felt like the car jumped, and there was a lot of smoke. I stopped the car, and called a friend to tow us home, and spent the waiting time, clearing the road from engine block fragments. From what I could see, a big screw from inside the Engine had been kicked through the engine block, and i picked up a few fragments of 4-5 mm thick steel.
I had another junk car once, where the cooling system started leaking and the engine got so hot, that the engine "selfstarted" again AFTER I pulled the key out.
Considering how explosive petrol fumes are, i guess something similar happened, if the car was only 2 floors below your office and nothing happened there. 1 dl petrol is enough to move 1.5 ton car 1 km with a speed of 100 km/h, so it is unlikely the petrol has exploded.
Most likely it was just the engine block that exploded, although i think it is unlikely to have happened 1 hour after it was parked.
Doc.
Let me grab my hand grenades after I finish my Grape Nuts...