Skunky SHO BBQ Lessons (Page 1 of 2)

Fire is the one thing that truly scares me with racing. I've come to peace with the idea of rolling a car, hitting a wall, hitting or being hit by another car. But fire scares the crap out of me. I'm glad your driver got out safely. And making sure you hit the kill switch in an emergency is absolutely something that should be drilled into your head.

good luck rebuilding the car.

That's unfortunate, but glad the driver wasnt hurt.

We watched as a car burned during practice once, and the safety crew blew several extinguishers at it, and it reigniting each time. We were 200 yards away, screaming "turn off the fuel pump!!!" until someone heard and did it. Went right out.

When my car burned up back in March, it really kind of surprises you when you see the flames....or at least it did me.   The Car sputtered and then I saw  a puff of smoke.  I pulled into the dirt and BOOM!   A mushroom cloud of flame & smoke erupts from the front of the car.

First thing I did was kill the electricity (...we do practice drills occasionally) , but by then it was too late.  The car was totally engulfed.  Things actually went into slow motion.  What probably took seconds, seemed like minutes.    It was SEE FLAMES.....KILL POWER.....WINDOW NET.....OPEN DOOR....RELEASE HARNESS....UNHOOK COOLSUIT..UNHOOK COMM WIRES...BAIL OUT!  It seemed like it took forever.

Oh and a bigger fire extinguisher would have been nice too!

Truth be known, it was more like:

See fire...Think,  "OH SHIT, I GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!"....hit kill switch...open window net...open door.....Try to bail "SHIT, MY HARNESS!"....Unbuckle harness....Try to bail, "SHIT, STUPID COOL SUIT!"...unbuckle cool suit...Try to bail, helmet gets whipped back by comm cords, "SHIT, STUPID RADIO!"    Unhook radio and Actually Bail!

Not seeing a fire truck anywhere near, reach back through window and grab extinguisher and go work!

Notice $400 Gopro still attached to it's mount.....reach through the window and grab that. and then stand back and watch it burn.

When the fire truck did arrive, they couldn't get the water to come out, so they had to call a second truck to the scene.   They wound up using 8 or 9 of the big 20 lbs extinguishers to put out the flames!

The whole time I'm watching them, I'm hearing the Benny Hill theme playing in my head!

Coolshirt makes SFI approved pull-release connectors... http://coolshirt.com/product/safety-pul … onnectors/ ...$34.  17lb pull to release.

Our VFD responded to a fully engulfed Ford Explorer (Exploder?).  We couldn't get the flames out even though we had 200 gallons of foam injected water.  We knocked down most of the flames but there was still fire under the car around the gas tank.  So we directed the hose into the filler and still couldn't extinguish it.  Another truck showed up with more water/foam and we finally got it out.  That was a really stubborn fire.

One other note...the smoke from a burning vehicle is extremely toxic.  The interior is filled materials that when burning give off fumes that have the potential to kill you if inhaled.  There is also the latent effect of inhaled fumes...it won't kill you until the next day.  Our protocol is to never fight a vehicle fire without our SCBAs.  So get out and get away.

Although we use quick disconnects on our cool suit setup for regular driver changes, we also have these attached to the cooler so that the driver can get out of the car without worrying about anything but the harness:

$11.03 when I ordered in July 2013
Breakaway connector Part 1

$8.58 when I ordered in July 2013
Breakaway connector Part 2

Not sure what the required release force is, but our drivers have occasionally climbed out of the car without disconnecting their cool suit and these have separated without them noticing.  In 10 races we have never had one separate accidentally.  They are also dry break and I haven't seen them leak ever.

Van

So is it safe to assume no kill-switch for the fuel pump if there's no oil pressure? Might be something to look into...

My fuel pump is powered by a relay which gets its power killed if my oil pressure warning light comes on. Obviously you won't have fuel pressure when going to start the engine so one of those momentary on/off toggle switches to bypass the cut-off is necessary, or just crank till you build pressure.

Yep.
A supplemental  momentary on push button override for starting would work well, too.

You're right Chris... $500 for a neck device, plus around $700 for a good fire supression is a big chunk of change, especially for a new team.  and most teams never end up "needing" them. It just helps my wife sleep on race weekends when I'm 6 hours away.

Personally I picked up the car with the FPS already installed, so that helped, but it was on my list.
So maybe not a min req for first race, but if you're in it for the long haul, I would strongly lobby that it should be on your hot list by start of second season.by then you've hopefully been able to get costs under control and plan it in...

Yes. Quoted from the official rules

The Fuego came from the factory with a Bosch Tachometric relay on the injection computer and fuel pump. It is initially closed when the starter is engaged, then is kept closed by pulses from the negative side of the coil. Engine turns off for any reason, ecu and fuel are killed automatically. Works well.