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Re: Fire Exstinguishers
Vehicle fires are mostly NOT in nice new rigs like our FJ's. That being said, they're mostly electrical in origin, but when an oily drippy piece of crap engine covered in oil soaked mud gets into a predicament with torn water hoses or a crimped exhaust pipe... all bets are off.
Wimpy little fire extinguishers typically sold for automotive use are a joke. You want one of the ones that looks like a small SCUBA tank and is rated for garage shop use where there could be burning oil, electrical stuff, wood, paint, and your 30 year old comic book collection complete with Superman #1! If you see smoke coming from under your hood, pull AWAY from the dry brush, touch the hood to see if it's too warm to open safely (fire underneath) and be ready with your extinguisher to immediately sweep the BASE of the fire (not rain down on top) with sweeping motions of the retardant.
Once a vehicle fire has gotten plastic and rubber involved, its AMAZINGLY hot. Don't count on being able to put it out at that point. Get the F away for your own safety. If you're going to be able to put out a fire with an extinguisher, you'll have to do it early, when there isn't a lot of heat stored up into the material.
Honestly, I don't really care if your car burns to the axles and looks like a black stain on the ground. Let your car burn. Save the forest! To that end, you'd better have a shovel so that you can start burying anything that burns with fat shovel-fulls of heavy dirt, preferably mostly sand (not dry grass and pine needles). That's the only real way to stop a car sized fire from becoming a forest fire that makes national news.
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-Jon-
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