Posted by Chris Lube Lublin on Monday, March 14, 2005 at 0:10AM :
I was going to use this as a reply for a message farther down the forumn, but decided it deserved a posting all its own. i hope others will learn from my painful mistake:
I lost a super clean and nice low miled 1970 W-200 due to piece of 3 inch long 20 year+ old rubber fuel hose. The truck only had 27K actual miles on it, and when I tuned it up, the hose looked fine when I changed the filter...So, I didnt take the 45 seconds to repalce it.....Wrong answer!!!!!! 2 weeks later I was running the truck, getting it ready to make it roadworthy, and fixin to pull it into the garage, when all of the sudden it stalled, and when I went to hit the key, I noticed the smoke pouring out the hood. Well I jumped out of the truck, and poped the hood open, and flamed jumped out, I ran in the house, called 911, and then went back out. I was in close proximity to the garden hose, so I hosed it down and put the fire out..... The fire department arrived, about 5 min after I had the fire up. When they pulled in, I was standing about 10 feet in front of the truck...Just staring at it, shaking my head........ This truck was my BABY! The damage is worse than the pics look. not only was everything underhood melted, but some interior was messed up most of the glass smoked, alot of metal was warped...... The truck, JUNK! Bummer.
Lesson of the day: If you do so choose to run the rubber fuel hose, change it once a year, I do now. I dont like to run it, but there are times when its unavoidable.......
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