The death of a legend

Two weeks ago I was feeling fine, my car had passed safety and emissions and I had gotten another year with my Mustang. I didn't care that the fender was smashed up from an old accident or that the mirror on the passengers side was knocked out and had one of those round convex, or concave I can never remember, mirrors in place of the real mirror. What I cared about was getting almost 29 mpg and feeling like I was cool cause I had a sports car! I had noticed the heat gauge would sometimes heat up but most of the time that just meant that I needed to add anti-freeze. I figured that there was a leak somewhere so I bought some leak stop and poured it in and kept on driving adding when needed.

On my way to work on April 2nd I was cruisin along feeling good thinking I was going to make it to work a few minutes early. I had just passed 123000 South and heading up the point of the mountain when I saw my heat gauge shoot to the right further then I ever imagined it could go! I immediately started to move to the right to pull off the freeway thinking I would have to add a ton of antifreeze. As I moved over suddenly a ton of white smoke/steam came bellowing out the back of my car. I was at the 146th exit so I pulled off immediately. As I neared the bottom of the ramp smoke started to come into the car through the vent so I turned off the heater, turned the corner into a park and ride parking lot and then I could have sworn I saw flames shooting out from under the hood!

As I came to a stop, constant flames came from the air intake and a few corners of the hood. As I stopped another car came swerving to a stop and we both got out of our cars. He asked if I wanted to call the cops and fire department. I said of coarse! As we were getting out another guy from NAPA auto parts pulled over in his truck and pulled out a fire extinguisher and came running over. I popped the hood and got ready to open it for him when he was ready. As I lifted the hood flames hit my hands for a moment and then he was spraying everywhere. While this was a good thing for the car it wasn't so good for me. The wind was blowing very hard that morning and was blowing the fire retardant right into me. All I could do was duck my head into my chest to try to breath clean air. He got most of the fire out before his extinguisher ran out but there was still flames left in the lining of the hood. We decided to pull out the lining and stomp out the fire.

As we pulled our the insulation we hit the hood prop and the hood came slamming down on the prop. We stomped out the fire and turned back to the car. There was still a little flicker coming from under there so the first guy who called the cops called his work and had them run up with another extinguisher. I ran around to pop the hood again but found that the release was stuck. I got out and tried to unjam the hood and went back around to the release. As I pulled I must have had a lot of adrenalin cause as I pulled I pulled the lever right out busting the cable that ran to the hood!

The reinforcements had arrived with more fire extinguishers and we decided to blast it through the air intake vents. We finally got it out but not before a hole had been burned straight through the hood!

Once all the action was over the cops finally showed up and radioed the fire department and told them exactly where we were. They showed up a few minutes and I showed them the hood release pulley and told them the story. They told me, "Well we can get it open it just won't be pretty!" I gave them the OK and luckily they didn't pull out the jaws of life but they got it open fairly easily.

As much as I can figure as I was driving the water pump busted and that's what caused the steam to shoot out from out the back. Then something shorted out due to the heat and caused a spark to jump up into the hood liner and there the fire started.

I'll post the story of the car buying experience tomorrow. It's a good one!