so last night, i got my carb all set up to go, and had the car running, it sounded so good finally, i was all ready for a test drive when i went to put the air filter back on. it got caught on the fuel line and i felt my finger get wet, i took it off and wiggled the line and gas sprayed out towards my distributer...went to the garage to get a screw driver and when i came out it was on fire luckily, it was only on fire for 20 or 30 seconds, and nothing looks damaged other than a few vaccum lines witch will be easy to fix..my question is, my brother (thankfully acting faster and smarter than me) immediatly turned the engine off and grabbed a fire extinguisher i forgot we had, (i was filling up a bowl of water not knowing what else to do.) he gave one quick spray, maybe 5 seconds at most of the extinguisher and the fire was out. alot of people at work told me that i probably just ruined my engine by using the extinguisher...but at least i didn't pour water down my intake :\ do you think i messed up my whole engine? should i take my carb back off and spray it out with carb cleaner?

 

What type of extinguisher was it?

 

Sucks cleaning it up

My headers caught fire on my old Firebird, not fun

 

just a basic household powder one. it was in the garage when we moved here next to the water heater

 

I would think as long as you clean out the carb real good it will be fine. I did something similar with a briggs and stratton motor. The only difference was the lid was off the gas tank, so it and the carb was on fire. I used a powder extinguisher also and got it in the tank and carb. I just flushed the carb out with carb cleaner and washed the tank out with a little gas. Motor ran fine when i got it back together.

 

yeah thats what i was hoping for too. theres not really that much powder really, and the engine was off before it was used so i don't think it even got very far into the carb. i should be able to tell if it made it into my engine if i take the carb off and look down the intake for any left over powder ...i would think anyways...

 

I would take off at least the carb, and if any of the powder is in the intake, remove the intake as well.

 

just clean it up and it'll be fine, I emptied one of those onto my old K5 blazer it was all down in the intake and everything, vacuumed it all out, ran like a top.

 

yeah, i took the carb off, and ran carb cleaner through the carb. i didn't see any powder in the intake at all it looked nice and clean. dusted out the engine compartment the best i could. it starts but it runs like crap, but I'm pretty sure its the carb not the engine, or because of the powder, because this is the first time ive ever used it, and the car ran fine before.

 

Make sure a vacuum line didnt get to burned and is leaking.