This is a story I thought I'd share. I know a canadian friend online that bought a s10 or sonoma.. you know those small chebby trucks. Came with a stock 4 banger that died due to detonation. So he wanted to convert to a v8 instead of just swapping for another 4banger. He did a real nice job of getting the 350 in there, a different tranny, put in a msd 6al box, new edelbrock carb, headers, the works. This guy spent several weeks on the project. He was just shining some things up in the driveway, and getting it ready to take down to the shop to have the exhaust pipes done. It was running relatively well.
He noticed the gas pressure was going a little low. He had a regulator in there that dropped the stock intank pump down to a set 6psi for his carb. He noticed his fuel level was low, and he attributed the low pressure reading to this. So he temporarily adjusts his regulator higher back up to 6psi and keeps going about his business. He goes and gets gas in a different car and comes back and pours it in. Not remembering about the regulator, he fires everything back up and it dies after a few seconds. Tries again, but this time he gets smoke .. a lot of smoke under the hood. Quickly he shuts it off and pops the hood, and goes to lift the hood up, realizing there is a fire in his engine bay. Calls in his house for someone to come help him and grabs the hose and starts spraying, but then the hood slams shut again because he didn't think to prop it up with the stick (Makes me thankful for the hood hinges that hold our hoods up on our old mopars!) Of course the hood won't open any more because the cable has melted. So he gets under the truck and sprays from the bottom side, while others try to force the hood open with various implements. Between the hose and extinguishers from the bottom, the fire is mostly put out. The hood finally comes open and then the rest of the fire is extinguished.

Lots of melted stuff, lots of mess.. it takes him a while to realize it was probably the carb that flooded then overflowed because of the excess pressure. Who knows how much pressure was going through the carb after the tank got filled. After that the fuel may of hit the headers or a backfire might have ignited everything. He isn't sure 100% this was the reason, but most likely it was. Moral of the story: careful when you fiddle with your fuel pressure regulator.... and have an external way of opening hood!

yes... tis I... burnt engine man!


i posted some pics and my story over at one of the S10 forums

http://www.s10forum.com/forum/showthrea ... adid=43848