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There’s been some talk about Birds burning and fire extinguishers in cars and so forth in the general 58-60 forum. With my best wishes to Ray in getting her rewired, thought I should pass on a little story of a fire I had in my ‘58 bird way back in ’95 when I lived in SoCal. It kinda goes like this…
"Come 'n listen to my story 'bout a man named Jed
Poor Minnesotan barely kept his family fed
An' then one day, he was cruisin’ in his bird,
An' up thru the hood came a lickin’ flame.
Fire that is! with Black soot! Toasting to a crisp!"
Actually it was July 1, 1995. It was my 40th birthday and my fiancé were just out for a nice b-day cruise in Carson, CA driving to Carburetor Land who had just recently re-built the carburetor. But something wasn’t quite right with the carb, so thought I’d stop by and see if they could tweak with it a bit. Just as we came up to the Carburetor Land shop and put the blinker on to turn into the lot, the flames erupted out of the hood vent. The engine killed and the Bird had enuff speed to roll her into the shop’s parking lot. As we rolled into the lot a whole brigade of mexican’s came out with fire extinguishers, I popped the hood, hopped out and opened it and they let loose with a bombastic display of extinguisher blast. Other then having to repaint the air cleaner, there was no fire damage to the car or engine bay. Carburetor Land even did a very thorough cleaning/detail job to get all of the extinguisher spray out and off of the car and engine.
We left the Bird there, walked to a local bar, celebrated my birthday and still being alive, then called a taxi for the 25 miles back home to San Pedro. My fiancé told me right then and there that she would never get back in the bird unless I had a fire extinguisher on board. The fire extinguisher remains in the Bird to this day mounted to the tunnel on the passenger floor side. Never had a fire in her since.
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