Fires

Car Fires

Last weekend while I was at a meeting for the Atlanta Clojure User's Group I received a frantic call from Marlene about a car fire at our complex.  It has initially gone through to voice mail,  but once I got the message I was on the phone with her.  She had already let me know that she and our two children were ok,  but neglected to tell me where it was in relation to our cars.  Since I had driven the Grand Prix that day I was a bit worried until I reached her and found out that it happened far away from the TT and S60. 

Over the past couple of months I had noticed two older cars that had been parking in our deck and was suspicious that it was one of them.  When I got home my suspicion was confirmed.  It was indeed a early 90's Cheverolet Lumina that had definitely seen better days. 

It looks like that engine is going to need some new motor mounts.

The car next to it didn't have as much damage as I would have expected.  With that being said the situation definitely had me thinking along two different mind sets.  One was annoyed that someone who had an older car that they clearly didn't spend the time to maintain would park somewhere where their car could potentially damage one of my vehicles.  The other felt bad for the person that owned this car because they probably didn't have a lot of money and given the current state of the economy it is likely to be their only source of transportation.

Thinking about it a bit further I have read a lot of stories about properly maintained Grand Prix's having engine fires from the Grand Prix mailing list.  Nobody there has had a definitive answer as to why these fires happened.  Some think it was because someone had serviced the fuel rails and hadn't replaced the seals while doing the service.  GM says that is it because of a leak in the valve cover gaskets that causes oil to drip on the manifold.  The thing is that I have seen other makes have problems with engine fires as well.  This makes me wonder if it has something to do with reformulation of gasoline to have 10% ethanol,  the fact that cars are lasting longer today,  or because we have more electrical systems that are not being designed to last 12+ years. 

After seeing how my Audi has been prone to having vacuum hoses disintegrate after 8 years and how it is known to have problems with the insulation on wiring harnesses my guess is that it is a combination of all three.  I definitely would love to get 300+ thousand miles out of the Grand Prix,  but it makes me wonder if a fire might lead to its early demise.

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