kill me why don't you

I helped a guy put out his brake fire after that I'm not so likely now if it's smoking bad and glowing ... It got my attention good when I went back to my truck to grab more water to throw on shoes and you hear the tire blow apart 10 feet away ... You gotta be really careful if it's smoking bad

 

Nope. LG with the last name AceHat (according to his now, ex-wife...).

 

oh, ok, I knew someone whose middle initials were KB.

He had died some time ago.

He lived by his middle initials....


Ka- BOOM..!

 

...and I've watched a friend repair a leaking gas tank with some of that repair putty they sell...fuel running up his arm as he worked it into the hole...and a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Yes, I kept my distance on that one...lucky for all involved, it was winter and we were outdoors, so the temps kept the fumes to a minimum and the breeze kept whatever fumes there were at low enough concentrations that nothing exciting happened.

 

Speaking of tire/brake fires reminded of this video of a test of an emergency stop in a Airbus 330-600 where the brakes caught fire and the tires exploded. The video is 8 minutes long and the action starts around the 4:45 mark. It is in French but subtitled.

 

When fuel goes Boom! is a lot more complicated than you guys realize. Setting fuel afire merely requires a hot enough ignition source, but making an explosion is different. To get a boom, the gas or diesel has to be in fairly narrow range of concentrations, roughly 1.5% -6.5%. You could light a flare in a fuel tank, and all you'd get would be a fire. Gasoline is dangerous because of it's low flash point (~-45F) which is the temperature it produces enough vapor to be flammable. Diesel has a flash point of ~100F, which is why it's so hard to start it on fire.

Bottom line, unless your in the heat of summer with a truck that returns a significant amount of fuel, the risk of a brake fire causing a diesel fuel fire are basically slim and none.

 

[QUOTE="semi" retired;4459505]Hi Pedigeed, while I agree with you on the fuel island deal, although the deal of the smoking brakes could be another issue altogether, I knew a guy that was leased to the same company as me, and his face had a bunch of scars. We asked him how his face got that way, he said, several years before, while his truck was running, I'd imagine returning a lot of fuel back to the tank creating a lot of vapors, he, without thinking, took his fuel cap off and lit his lighter to see the fuel level, and the vapors flashed in his face. I think a match will go out if you drop it in a container of fuel oil, but the vapors are indeed combustible.[/QUOTE]


A friend of mine one night lite his cigarette lighter held it down to the top of his fuel tank after taking the fuel cap off, trying to see how much fuel was in it, it exploded. And it burnt him quite bad.

Of course he had just killed his engine so the fuel was quite warm.

One can't be to safe when it comes to fuel.

 

Hell I worry more about the cold water on the hot brake drum. Gonna make that steel more brittle depending on how hot it was to begin with. I have seen brake drums shatter and it is not pretty.

 

That's some hot steam too! Be careful!