New leak involving fire

hear

Can't type
Lifetime Supporting Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2020
Messages
3,230
Location
Prosper, TX
If it ain’t one thing it’s another.

Backed it out of the garage for a test drive and saw smoke. Saw some oily residue on the drivers side motor mount & on the exhaust right where the main exhaust bolts to the header pipe. No idea where it came from.

Drove it for a mew minutes, then came back home. Turning into the garage the smoke came back. Seemed to be related to hard left turns. My friend hopped out and put up the hood to see if we could identify the source. Locked the wheel hard left and apparently there were flames from under the intake. He had me kill it immediately so he couldn’t actually see the source but it’s in that area- under the intake on the firewall side-ish.

Directly above the motor mount is a tube that also has residue on it, and there is some splatter on the firewall. I have no idea where this is coming from, or why it would ignite, or especially why it only seems to happen at wheel lock.

Have not had the courage to start it again, so let’s troubleshoot first. Open to any & all ideas here.

38AC1D79-090F-49ED-AB46-9E0AE8C64713.jpeg


57990345-4E65-4712-84F2-8D900EDC560D.jpeg
 
brake fluid? still got a full pedal? has the level in the MC gone down any?
1 might also suspect a valve pan cover leak if it didn't appear as if it had sprayed into the fire wall. or maybe the fan could have forced it back.

hard to tell about flames but if oil got onto the hot exhaust it would smoke or maybe could flame up. but if it were burning oil residue. shutting it off wouldn't stop that necessarily.

clean it all off and try another idle, if that goes ok take a short run and try to nail down the culprit with a fresh witness.
 
Last edited:
If related to turning the wheels, I would guess power steering fluid.

What color is the fluid?

Check the PS fluid level.
 
  • Like
Reactions: hear
Brakes feel 100% fine. My friend was watching it the last time and it 100% started when I cranked the wheel over. So we got smoke (and theoretically flames( three times: first was backing out of my garage which involves the wheel hard to driver. Second was coming back into my garage with the wheel cranked hard to driver. Both times we saw smoke from the hood but we were driving so couldn't immediately investigate. The third time was with the hood up and things seemed fine until I cranked hard to driver. Then I experienced an unrequested release of fire.

While we were driving normally (that is not steering to wheel lock) there was no smoke or anything out of the ordinary. The smoke burned off and then stopped. The smoke is either from the flames and/or from the oil (could be gas, could be oil, could be ATF??, could be PS fluid, could be brake fluid) on the exhaust. Backing out of the driveway the rest of the way, the smoke burned off and then it was fine again, until I locked hard to driver. Did not test hard to passenger.
 
If related to turning the wheels, I would guess power steering fluid.

What color is the fluid?

Check the PS fluid level.

Hmm, fluid didn't seem to have any color, and I don't run ATF in my PS pump, so it could be it. But the PS lines don't run under the intake, do they?
 
My money is on a pinhole or tiny crack in the power steering high pressure line. You should be able to start it up and troubleshoot for a little bit before the exhaust manifold reaches ignition temperature.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Matt131 and hear
Found the pressure side was all wet away from the pump. Was planning to swap grilles for another project anyway, and changing the PS hoses is waaaaaay easier with the grille & radiator out of the way.

Got the lines off…is PS fluid supposed to be brown? 😩

15CC68B0-C99C-4BE9-A5CF-DA78D84AF720.jpeg
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mobusaki
I can't imagine replacing these lines with the grill & radiator in place. No. Me. Gusta.
 
Added way too much PS fluid and then sucked a bunch of it back out. Was too worried about transmission stuff to test lock-to-lock for any continued flamethrower effect, but no leaks at the pump or gearbox. Although with how much I spilled filling up the pump it could have a hole in the bottom and I might not be able to tell.

I watch a couple videos on people replacing the lines, and EVERYBODY made a huge point about being sure to not cross thread the fittings at the gearbox. For one, yes, it is hard to get that fitting in there nice and square with the weight of the line wanting to pull it down. But I was never able to get it to finger tighten more than a turn or two. I had to put the wrench on it, although it took extremely light force to turn it. If it had fought me at all I would've backed it off and started over. I had my hand only about 2" from the fitting to minimize the r x F effect; obviously it would've been easy to turn if I moved to the far end of the wrench. My goal was to make the physics do as little of the work as possible. Just in case any little leaguers out there run across this task one day.