How can a car explode?

Transportation, Travel and Trips
21
Divorce settlement gone bad..

22
Guessing that you work in the PMH

(or this is very common in Basel)

In building 88 5th we did not hear anything either, but it smelled quite heavily of smoke after a while.

Was unfortunately not enough to warrant a wild panic or anything exciting..

23
If it is the incident i think, it was caused by electric wires, and not a car.

Doc.

24
Careful what you wish for Begga. People may soon notice what an awfully odd coincidence it is that this car exploded on the week you weren't in the office.

25
I once had fuel pump problems and digging into workshop manuals was genuinely surprised to learn how high a pressure they keep up, even when switched off. Stones or other sharp objects thrown up from the road might damage a fuel line (that fuel pump was at the rear of the car).

I also had a battery in another car which was mounted in the boot (trunk), which caught fire when the jack shorted across its terminals. Battery cover corroded by acid, very old Mini, oily rags and old coat in the boot as well.

Fortunately/unfortunately I was driving the car when it happened, smelled the smoke and could deal with it in time. In hindsight it could have been quite dangerous and I should have let the fire brigade deal with it.

26
I had that with an old mini. A two inch bypass hose between the cylinder head and the radiator was the culprit and due to a British Leyland strike I couldn't find a replacement. With such a small engine. putting the car in gear and pressing on the brake pedal for a minute or two was enough to stop it restarting.

The joys of motoring

27
My guess is that it was a turbo diesel car that was driven there in a hurry or at the maximum road speed for a sustained period. It probably was not given sufficient idling time after parking for the turbo to cool down from a red heat state and an engine bay fire was the result.

Even modern water cooled turbos need time to cool down with the engine idling before shutting down, particularly after a hard drive. 30 seconds is usually enough or at least five minutes of gentle driving following a motorway blast.

The video below is of a race engine on a dyno test bed, but I have done the same with regular automotive turbo diesels pushed hard (before the days of YouTube).

Some years ago a friend of mine had a Ford RS1600 with a turbo from TurboTechnics. He always drove it hard from home to work and back until I lifted the hood/bonnet one day to show him the glowing turbo. He didn't need any further explanation regarding fire risk and started to do the same shutdown idling that I practised with my turbo.

Shutdown idling is not politically correct in Switzerland, especially at traffic lights when there is an expectation to switch off your engine. Switching off a turbocharged engine without allowing turbo cooling time damages the turbo and increases the risk of an engine bay fire.

It is unlikely any vehicle dealer, manufacturer or politician will acknowledge this so you can just consider this my opinion from my own personal R&D experience with turbos.

As a side note, some turbo diesel particle filters automatically burn off the soot in the filter by electronically adjusting the fuel calibration to get the exhaust gas hotter for the burn off. You don't need to drive like a nutcase to do this, it does it when the filter starts to clog.

http://www.youtube.com/v/6RpGKP_FsTc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&

28
It may surprise you that they don't actually explode easily. They are designed to safely vent gas to avoid explosion.

LPG is heavier than air. If the pressure in the tank exceeds something like 'five' times the fuel pressure, the tank will vent automatically. It is purely the risk of a faulty safety valve venting at a much lower pressure than 500psi in an enclosed space without adequate airflow that is the reason why LPG vehicles are not permitted underground. Vented gas collecting in the bottom of the garage is the explosion risk.

If you really want to know how dangerous your factory fitted ENCAP5 petrol or diesel tank is compared to automotive LPG cylinders read this http://www.go-lpg.co.uk/danger.html