You may have noticed a recent topic i posted regarding my Zafira 2.2 and the hassle we had with balance shafts. Well, after all the hard work getting a deletion kit installed and new chians etc etc, we got it back on the road, and have to say what a difference.
However, on Tuesday night whilst running a friend home, this disaster was thrown upon us.
as we came round a corner, smoke started to appear fromt the dashboard vents, shortly followed by flames!!! At that i planted the car in the side of the road, and both me and my passenger jumped out, (he was nearly run over by another car to oblivious to the smoke coming out)
The flames rapidly, and i mean rapidly spread from vents to entire dash! Despite ringing the fire brigade twice, it took them 30 mins to get to us (sent to the wrong address, and the fire station 1/4 mile away was not alerted!) by which time the car was gutted. Glass had melted, tyres exploded, literally nothing left inside apart from the bare shell. The only thing left is what you can see, sorry its a bad pic it was dark!
Had i had a fire extinguisher, I MAY have saved it, i may not. But fortunatly no one was hurt, just glad kids were not in it at the time.
It appears that there was a wiring fault from behind the dash, and as we had not used it much since buying it in February, we had no idea there was any faults. Only thing i could find wrong was no fog lights, but had not got round to doing it.
Just thought i'd share the experience, and advise if you do buy a fire extinguisher, make sure you out it IN the car, and put it somewhere easy to get to. In the boot under the carpet is probably not the best place!! But, like the fire brigade will tell you ( and i still thank them cos they got some guts attacking a fireball like that!) don't put yourself at risk. The rate that this thing went up was scary, if I had kids in th car, i would have just had time to get them out, not fight the fire. Just remember that, we all love our cars and I MAY have thought about having a go at putting it out, advise to all, don't bother, get everyone out of the car first, after all it can be replaced.
I have now the agonising wait for the insurance company to do their thing before i can even consider looking for another car, and i doubt i'll get anywhere near what i paid, but at least we are alive
and a big thanks you to the guys a Strood fire Station for doing such a brave job!