I was doing some initial tuning on my brand new 350 TPI when it happened. I had the fuel pressure set safely around 47psi and the timing appearantly a bit too far advanced. The car was sitting in the garage running at different RPMs for maybe 20 minutes and then...FLASH!

The fan turn on connector/wire in the passenger side head caught fire! I quickly shut off the engine and ran back over to "blow" the fire out. I immediately noticed that the header and especially the collector were glowing red hot! They were so hot that the connector & wire just burst into flames 4 inches away from the tubes. Luckily, the Taylor Pro 8mm wires held up perfectly unscathed and they were even closer to the glowing headers.

My concern is...what the heck caused this and what damage could it have done (other than dulling the JetHot coating, which it did)? I've since tuned it "correctly" and it runs fine without hot headers. But, my exhaust sounds raspy now when I get on it. I'm having the Catco convertor replaced and a new Flowmaster muffler is on the way. I'm hoping one or the other cures the raspy, almost glasspack like sound. The car seems to run fine except for the crappy sounding 3" exhaust. Any ideas?

 

Sounds like your timing is off and you're runnin lean.