I had been invited to participate, along with fourteen other vintage Rolls-Royce open tourers, in the drivers' parade around the grand prix circuit ahead of the Formula One event at Silverstone on Sunday, June 11th, 2006. The same car was booked into its class at the RREC Annual Rally at Kelmarsh Hall a week later.
The car, a 1929 replica bodied, 20/25, GDP 38, was in fine shape. The day before the big day, I had started the final preparation of the car. It was very hot and I was sweating after much polishing of nickel and brass parts, but not nearly half as much as I was to experience later.

I wanted to move the car off the hydraulic lift and drive it around to another part of the garage. With starting carburetter open, ignition switch on, timing fully retarded, hand throttle closed down, the foot-operated starter motor switch was engaged. It fired first time as is normal but through the rear view mirror I noticed clouds of white 'smoke' at the back of the car. This should not have been happening and when I closed down the starting carburetter it persisted and the engine ran as if it were fully warmed up. The cloud of what then became clear to be petrol vapour continued but was not quite as bad when I fully closed the mixture strength lever on the steering column hand controls. Having done this, the engine should have stalled through fuel starvation and low engine temperature, but it didn't. I stopped the engine, opened up the bonnet to inspect the carburettor. Its overflow pipe was dripping profusely on to and through the undertray and coming to rest in an oil tray on the garage floor. I opened up the float chamber, could see nothing wrong, reassembled it and restarted the car. The petrol fumes emerging from the exhaust pipe were still strongly evident. I revved the engine, hoping this might cure the problem but to no avail. I drove the car round to the other side of the garage where it straddled another line of oil trays and left the engine running on fairly high revs. I returned to the house to wash my hands and to gather some more cleaning rags. Two minutes later I was back in the garage, the engine was still running and the water temperature was around 60 degrees Fahrenheit by now.

GDP 38 Fire damage to bonnet. GAK 5 in the background

Orange Light.

I could still sense the high concentration of unburned fuel in the exhaust gases. One last attempt to blow away the problem, I thought, and, bending over into the footwell on the driver's side to press my hand on the accelerator pedal, I noticed orange light through holes in the firewall! This was no orange light. It was a fire!
My first reaction, other than the strongly murmured expletives, was to switch off the engine, close the fuel tap and then to move to the passenger side of the engine area to see what was happening. A developing fire in the engine bay and the oil tray beneath caused enormous concern. The fire from the oil tray with its mix of oil and petrol seemed destined to cause extensive fire damage to this car and to the other three cars in the garage, not to mention the garage itself, should a chain reaction of car fires become unstoppable. My thought at the time was to push the car backwards off the flaming oil tray and out of the garage into the open air. Despite all determination and being steeped in adrenalin by now, my strength and power were to prove a mismatch for the inertia of the car, not helped by the poor friction between leather soled shoes and a painted concrete garage floor. By this time thick black smoke was emerging from beneath the engine bay and from every orifice thereabouts and the front end of the car was becoming very hot indeed.

Panic Prevails. I shouted out for my wife, Christine, who I knew was tending the vegetable patch nearby. With her help and fitness, successfully pushing the burning car away from the oil tray was more probable. Sadly she is deaf in one ear. My calls for help and the exclamation that we had a fire were now more than tinged with panic. A neighbour, some 40 metres away, could hear me shouting for Christine. She told me later that she thought Christine was responsible for a barbecue ( after all, it was lunchtime ), that she had forgotten about it and that the whole pile of meat was about to become an unsightly, inedible pile of almost pure carbon waste. She was right about a barbecue of course; "The Best Barbecue in the World"! Christine finally arrived after what seemed five minutes but was probably no more than 60 seconds. She ran to the hose pipe connected permanently to the tap in the garage and, having turned it on, rushed to the car. Within 10 seconds, thanks to her, the fire was extinguished. Is it not strange that in such a situation as this it is easy to be focussed on one method, not necessarily the correct one, of overcoming a problem? For me it was to push the car into the open air to prevent more extensive and perhaps untold damage. Christine exercised better judgement in my opinion; without doubt, her method worked almost instantly. In the meantime, I was partly scorched and looked decidedly speckled with soot, particularly in the face, arms and chest areas. My hair looked as though I had been given an instant dark rinse!

Damage to nearside wing

A good Cup of Tea and a Closer Inspection.

After the emotion had diminished over a cup of tea, I returned to the scene of 'the barbecue'. What a mess. That lovely, silver coloured bonnet and part of the nearside wing had copped for it as can be seen from the photographs. A peer under the bonnet revealed a ghastly sight. Just about every aspect of the engine and chassis in this area was blackened. This was devastating for me; I keep my engine bays looking pristine at all times on all cars.

I immediately e-mailed the organisers at Silverstone to inform them of my disaster and to apologise for my absence the following day. On the Sunday morning, a closer inspection was called for. The fire appeared to emanate from the nearside rear part of the engine bay. Christine had said to me that she had to extinguish flames on the exhaust in the region of the starter motor. Clearly the strong heat from the exhaust manifold and down-pipe had probably caused the evaporating petrol from the oil tray and perhaps a still dripping overflow pipe from the carburettor, to reach combustion threshold. The oil would have exacerbated the problem. Certainly, damage was worse on the exhaust manifold side of the engine. The wires to the dynamo and to the starter motor had been deprived of their insulating sheaths and on the driver's side the feed wire to the induction coil had suffered a similar fate. Perhaps there had been damage to the starter motor itself. Luckily, the magneto was not in situ. I had visions of a burned front tyre and blistered wheel rim, but these had escaped damage.

The Nervous Trial, the Quick Fix and the Rapid Response.

Very cautiously I turned the engine using the starter motor and with the ignition on. She fired up straightaway and there was no sign of clouds of fuel leaving the exhaust pipe. My impression of the damage, other than to the paintwork on the bonnet and nearside wing was soot, what appeared to be a few bare wires and a roasted Autovac. By early Monday morning, the insurance company had been informed, a retired autoelectrician friend was on his way to assess damage to the wiring and starter motor and a reliable paint shop lined up to perform the repairs as quickly as possible. By Monday afternoon, the starter motor had been stripped down, checked out, cleaned of all the soot, declared fit for purpose and re-installed with a fresh positive feed cable, the three wires to the dynamo had been replaced and a jury rig feed to the induction coil connected up so that at least I could drive the car from near Nottingham to Chesterfield for the paint man and the insurance inspector to do their respective jobs. Incidentally, since the vertical bonnet panel on the nearside had suffered the worst of the intense heat and was confined on all four sides by chassis, radiator, scuttle and an upper bonnet panel, expansion of the aluminium caused it to buckle with no return to its former self on cooling. This was another job for the paint repair man along with a thorough removal of all soot. The total task for him was bigger than I had first thought. I have to say, however, that the RREC club insurers were on the ball straightaway, repairs given the green light by Wednesday and I had possession of the car by Friday morning. Admittedly, Terry Jones, the "Autofit" paintwork expert had done a great deal of groundwork in removing the bonnet and autovac and commencing the soot removal in anticipation of some sort of formal approval by the insurers, but nevertheless the time scale of events was nothing but impressive. The further rewiring of parts of the engine bay and an inspection of wires in the conduits on either side of the forward parts of the chassis and replacement where necessary came later.

The car looks its normal, striking self once more and all I can say is that under the circumstances I was lucky not to have suffered far, far more damage in the garage not to mention bodily damage on my part and that of Christine.

Soot damage to engine, rocker cover and partially cleaned cylinder head. Note bare wires to dynamo. Under the soot, the autovac is badley blistered.	Driver's side: not as much damage here, but note thr jury rig of wire to induction coil. Engine and steering column partially cleaned.

Lessons To Be Learned.

1) If, unexpectedly, profuse quantities of petrol are puthering out of the exhaust, you have a float chamber jet that is not seating properly.
2) Turn off the ignition to prevent the engine warming up and shut off the petrol to stem the flow of fuel from the autovac to the float chamber.
3) Do not under any circumstances leave the engine running either on high speed idling or even low speed idling. The hotter the engine gets, in particular the exhaust manifold, the closer the evaporating, spilled fuel will get to combustion threshold.
4) Open up the float chamber and suck out all fuel using a pipette.
5) Using a pipette and clean petrol, flush away any microscopic particles from the needle seating which probably caused the needle jet to remain partially open in the first place. A problem here is that the offending particle may be invisible to the eye. Repeated flushing and sucking out is probably safer.
6) Reassemble the float chamber, turn on the fuel tap and turn the engine using the starting handle to draw fuel into the carburettor.
7) Observe the overflow pipe from the carburettor to ascertain if the problem persists. If it does, repeat the cleansing process.
8) Only when confident that the float chamber is now full of fuel and the overflow problem has been arrested should you attempt to fire up the engine.
9) When the engine is restarted, look and smell for excessive amounts of unburned fuel in the exhaust. Additionally, be quick to test the mixture strength by closing down the starting carburettor and then fully weaken off the mixture using the hand controls. If the engine fails to continue, you have probably overcome the problem. If the engine continues to function, it is likely that the problem persists.
10) If you use oil trays beneath your engine or if you have an oil slick on the garage floor, ensure that as a matter of good garage practice, any oil is removed on a regular basis, thus reducing potential fire hazards.
11) Invest in at least one free standing or wall-mounted fire extinguisher and ritualise a series of fire emergency scenarios. Furthermore, regular mental rehearsal of such scenarios will pay dividends should a fire event occur.
12) A close friend has told me since that the petrol we buy, on account of the fact that it possibly comes from a desert in The Gulf, will possibly have a very fine sand sediment in it. Modern cars have a modern in-line filter in the fuel lines and although we may have the traditional, but rather crude, filter between the autovac and the carburettor, it might be prudent to install discreetly one of the modern types as well.

With hindsight, there was a give away sign right from time zero. Starting the engine from cold and using the starting carburettor and going through the much practiced ritual of retarded ignition and zero idling speed on the hand controls, the low key thumping I sensed both by ear and by touch on the controls was evidence of over-choking. Be sensitive to this and stop the engine immediately if this occurs.

In a shock situation as I found myself in, panic may develop and all the good habits and practices you know about are likely to evaporate almost instantly. You know where the fire extinguishers are but you may engage in a totally different solution strategy which may or may not be productive. My reaction; to push the car backwards out of the garage, failed miserably. Thank God Christine was not too far away. Not all wives are close by at the time of an emergency and if by chance they are, they may not be able to run as fast as Christine.

PS. I cannot fault the insurers, Equity Red Star through Richardson Hosken, the RREC insurance broker. They have been most efficient, helpful and extremely sympathetic.