Originally Posted By: outrun
I have question. On every so occasion you may drive by a vehicle engulfed in flames. Usually these are onboard fires (versus something next door getting them.) Call me a paranoid owner or what ... so I wonder on an otherwise highly maintained car what can I do as she ages to minimize some kind of fatal fuel related fire? I ask this as I would hate to see a babied car engulfed in flames and have the insurance company give me back nothing of the thousands I spend to keep her alive.
1)Preemptive Replacement of fuel rail-line rubber hose interfaces?
2)Inspection of fuel lines?
3)Do nothing and not think about it as fire is statistically unlikely as a complete brake failure?
Thanks!
IMHO it's statistically insignificant. In addition to what other posters comments on this (all good points BTW, except the no panels after Saturn one...which I just take it as a good cheer-me-upper for the day)
Cars caught on fire these days mainly due to the following reasons:
-kids stole them for joyride, then abandon them, set them on fire to destroy evidence.
-robbers/professional criminals did the same thing: burn stolen vehicles to destroy any potential evidence.
-cars with mis-wired/damaged wiring due to poor practice: boom boyz adding things that draw excessive currents, causing shorts(wiring loom overheating), etc. which may lead to wiring induced fires.
-manufacturing defects.
-cat converters too close to dry grass or something flammable...
-other reasons unknown but was induced by man-made cause (someone set it on fire delibrately?)
There could be some more but I cannot recall now.
Also: unless there's a need to replace rubber fuel lines, etc. due to defects or so, I personally would not do that under most circumstances for the fact that (a) most EFI fuel lines are of high pressure, fuel and fuel-additive resistant, fluoro-elastomer variety that only good quality ones like the original OEM ones would survive years of services w/o any significant degradations and such. Replacing it with aftermarket ones will surely guarantee failures due to different rubber compositions and such.
(b) Since my first car (a 1976 Plymouth Arrow, actually it's a Mitsu Celeste hatchback in Plymouth disguise) that I came across fuel line deterioriation, I have yet to encounter anymore rubber fuel line degradations on automobiles anymore, even with cars in-service by yours-truely for the past 20 yrs, with combined mileage of over 1 million kms to date, never a single fuel line degradation esp. on EFI pressured lines even with high mileage cars.
Q.