big fire ball cleaning carb

[NOPHO84K30]

Well i was using brake cleaner to clean the carb ...not sure if thats bad or not.... i had it running was spraying it prety good in and around it . Then poof huge fireball it killed the motor fire roaring on top of engine i was in shock for a few seconds. Ran over to the fire extinguisher pulled the pin and hosed it down then had to kill the fuel pump inside cab ..its electric and was still pumping . and i smoked about 15 sigeretts shaking adrenaline WAS pumping . Used the leaf blower to clean off the powder i think it tasted like lemon weird. Checked everything over then fired it up to see what would happen. it ran fine had to go get carb cleaner at orielys to clean it out again from the powder. while driving the throttle was reving up had to tap it alot to get it to go down every time i had to shift. I cleaned it real good now runs fine only melted about 8 " of wire loom not bad it was only on fire for about 20 seconds while i panicked from now on ill use carb cleaner and not soak it down.... got lucky thx

 

[PrairieDrifter]

Carb cleaner is just as flammable lol. Im not really sure what the difference is between carb and brake cleaner, so I couldn't tell you if you should be using brake cleaner on your carb. They may not be very different but both are equally as flammable

 

[SkinnyG]

Some brake cleaners are highly highly toxic when burned. Maybe don't use that.

 

[crazy4offroad]

Brake cleaner has chlorine in it and can poison you. I had a similar incident tuning a carb. I forgot to reattach the fuel line and the carb had enough fuel in it to fire up and idle, all the while the fuel line was spewing gas everywhere and burst into flames. I about tore the back door of the house off the hinges trying to get to an extinguisher, I had pulled the truck up in the yard kinda close to the house and flames were rolling out from under the hood 10 feet in the air. After it was all said and done the whole wiring harness was torched and that's when I did the cab swap/engine rebuild. The powder in the extinguisher I used really made any little cut you have on your hands or whatever burn like crazy. Glad it wasn't worse for you.

 

[firebane]

I know we've all done stupid stuff in our lifetimes.

But you really should consider this a very tough life lesson. NEVER EVER use anything flammable around a running vehicle. There is to many things that can ignite it.

 

[quaddriver]

brake cleaner, the real stuff, contains tetracholroethylene (percloroethylene aka perc) - the wonderful smell you used to pick up outside dry cleaners.

flamable as heck, carcinogenic as heck, poisonous as heck.

And a can of that is more expensive than carb cleaner which generally just has a few hydrocarbon solvents like toluene and acetone.

while I dont recommend ingesting, huffing, or bathing in ANY of them, each has a use...