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My dad and uncle were doing a test day at Donington in the early 90's with my uncle's newly purchased Tuscan race car which was as per the original spec using 4x 48mm Dellortos. When in the pit garage, they started the car and it spluttered, spitting back through the carbs and setting fire to the filter. Everyone in the garage was voicing their opinion that my uncle should give it a boot full of throttle to clear it's throat and extinguish the flames but he couldn't help but think that potentially adding more fuel into the mix could make things worse. Eventually he pulled the plumbed in extinguisher release and a what could be best described as a dribble was emitted. The bottle was empty and somebody's leather jacket was eventually used to extinguish the flames. #CSB
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ricky2slicky
@Brommers
And while we're on the subject of fire extinguishers, A Funny Thing happened a while ago.
Back when I was living in London, I had a lock-up garage near Turnpike Lane tube station which I used as my workshop. A friend of mine known to one and all as 'Hoopy', who also lived in London, had at the time a very nice and very tweaked Caterham, with lots of carbon bits, a tuned 1.8 K-series with a DVA head, a Quaife slipper diff and an electrically-operated plumbed-in fire extinguisher. All very nice. He wanted to fit a new spangly SPA Designs tacho with built-in shift lights, so he came over to my lock-up to fit it and do a few bits of maintenance. He parked the car outside, and started work.
Since he was working on the back of the dashboard, and was quite a tall chap, he was lying in the car upside down, with his head down in the driver's footwell and his legs up the back of the driver's seat hooked over the roll bar. It looked a bit odd, and he was fairly well lodged into position, but he didn't have many options. While I was working away on my car (the Fury Blackbird) I heard him say 'That's odd.... There's two bare wires here.'
'I wonder if they should be connected'.
The next thing I knew there was this loud wailing sound and a slightly quieter hissing sound. I rushed outside to find Hoopy's legs sticking out of an increasingly large pile of foam. The two wires he'd tried connecting, on an experimental basis, had triggered the fire extinguisher, which was busily pumping out its contents over his legs and groin.
I did help him out eventually, but only after I'd stopped laughing. I gather his drive home was quite uncomfortable, especially with a six point harness.