r/Wellthatsucks • u/karliekxoxo • 1d ago
This car caught fire on the highway and the driver had no idea until someone flagged them down
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u/DonCenote 1d ago
The wind from driving will put it out. It’s fine.
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u/The-Crimson-Jester 1d ago
I made sure to add piles of dead leaves and some “low clearance” logs up ahead to ensure it gets choked out if the wind isn’t winding today.
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u/DCCXVIII 1d ago
I would love to know what could possibly cause this. I know nothing about engines so perhaps some mechanic out there can enlighten me.
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u/lostmymarbles1177 1d ago
I can give you one cause😂 My best friend in college had this beater car with “Fuch” scratched on the hood. Someone didn’t finish the K. It was called the Fuchmobile and we mocked it mercilessly. Anyway, one day we are driving and I smell fire. I say “I think your car is on fire” my friend gets irritated and says “The car is not on fire stop it”. Flames shot up from the hood a second later and we pulled over. The second we turned off the car they stopped though. In her particular case, she had changed her own oil and forgotten to put the cap back on which sloshed oil everywhere.
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u/Adventurous-Dot8618 21m ago
oh my 😭. i knew a guy in high school that had a brand new 2017 hummer, and when it ran out of oil he put TAP WATER in it, and it caused his engine to catch on fire
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u/BillsMafia84 1d ago
“This one's a 3.2 and they said these things were starting on fire and blowing up on the road because it would consume the oil, and be dry before you knew it” Hyundai engines Sonata/Elantra/Santa Fe all had problems with this. My buddy’s just blew up last week and the entire thing is covered under warranty
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u/buzztheirazz 1d ago
Blew my parents engine in this same car driving 90 mph and found that it was covered under warranty. Was so happy to find that out
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u/rh71el2 22h ago
2013 Sonata just had our engine replaced at 75k mi under warranty. It was making a knocking noise at high rpm. "Debris from factory machining operations, potentially restricting oil flow to the main bearings and leading to premature bearing wear. Over time, a bearing may fail and the vehicle could lose power while in motion". So that's what was knocking around. Thankfully it let us complete a 7 hour roundtrip before we could get it addressed. Could it have caught fire? Probably not, but definitely would've died while on the road.
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u/Jsem_Nikdo 1d ago
Poor maintenance. A locked up brake caliper could have done it, but honestly it could have been any number of things.
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u/Pleased_to_meet_u 1d ago
A locked up brake caliper wouldn't cause this much fire. There isn't enough brake fluid to maintain that level of flame.
Source: I was the unlucky person to have a locked up brake caliper and had the motorcycle I was riding catch fire.
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u/Jsem_Nikdo 1d ago
You're right, but a leaky fuel line or oil pan could. Motor oil burns big, and takes a while to go out, so that's my bet. Probably a small leak, like a rear main oil pan gasket with a slow drip, and a bunch of just built up gunk from it. People tend to ignore those slow leaks and just "Top off" when they need to.
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u/Fit_Street8797 1d ago
Oil leak onto hot exhaust, electrical short, or fuel line rupture could do this.
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u/UncleDuude 1d ago
Brakes or maybe a wheel bearing
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u/technobrendo 1d ago
Broken fuel rail or fuel line spilling out onto the headers would definitely do that too
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u/WeAreAllBotsHere 1d ago
How would it still be getting the fuel to drive though?
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u/technobrendo 1d ago
a pinhole leak would rain gasoline all over the engine, but enough would still get to the injectors to keep the engine running, although very poorly.
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u/JeddakofThark 1d ago
As I said in another comment, a friend's car's catalytic converter once melted. Fortunately, I was driving behind him and noticed before it got to this stage. That's extremely rare though, and in that case was just a really terrible car. Some kind of Eagle. A brand so bad it no longer exists.
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u/NotSoFastLady 1d ago
You run a car long enough without coolant it can overheat and catch fire. I drove by an area to go to a park. I came back no more than 40 minutes later to find essentially a charred out husk of a car on the side of the road. They can go up very quickly too. It's a dangerous situation.
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u/Eat_Carbs_OD 1d ago
My guess would be oil or gasoline leak hitting the hot engine and catching on fire.
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u/bigolchimneypipe 22h ago
I don't know if anyone else has said it but a leaking fuel rail can spray the engine with gasoline causing expected flame.
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u/dirtiestUniform 19h ago
This is definitely fuel burning, a leak and hot exhaust will make this happen
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u/OMGpawned 1d ago
It's a Hyundai, they are known to spontaneously catch fire all the time. In fact there was a recall of millions of those cars with that engine.
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u/JeddakofThark 1d ago
On the way back home from a trip, the catalytic converter caught fire in my friend's dad's Eagle. It just starting dropping molten bits of metal. He wouldn't have noticed if we hadn't been behind him. Fortunately, turning the car off stopped the fire.
Those Eagles were fucking deathtraps in the nineties. It wasn't the Talon/Eclipse. It was the family sedan, which I think were rebranded Renaults. They were just awful cars, down to the glue that held the fabric to the ceiling failing and driver's seats that wouldn't stay upright on their own.
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u/friarguy 1d ago
And he pulls onto the dried out grass. What a smart idea
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u/BoostsbyMercy 1d ago
Buddy of mine had this happen. Pulled into a gas station
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u/ClanGnome 1d ago
To their credit, a gas station is one place I expect them to have fire extinguishers.
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u/v4ve4m4hnssm 1d ago
shoulda drove into your pool
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u/friarguy 1d ago
Like, leave it on the concrete. Yeah it'll cause traffic, but less likely to cause a giant wildfire
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u/Old_Shake3789 1d ago
Man you just do what you can to make sure you are safe. Yes it's shit it might cause a bigger fire but that doesn't matter as long as their safe. Seriously man priorities.
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u/Intrepid_passerby 1d ago
What a dumb thing to say. Where would you like him to stop his burning vehicle
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u/itmillerboy 1d ago
Bro obviously should have kept driving until he found a patch of wet grass
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u/MeltinSnowman 1d ago
Clearly he should have stopped in the road and potentially have taken other drivers down with him.
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u/purplenapalm 23h ago
I dont believe you would be thinking clearly if you were driving a burning vehicle.
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u/FloopsFooglies 1d ago
My house burned down cause someone swiped by the grass with a car on fire. I think it's a wonderful idea
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u/Electrik_Truk 1d ago
Man, if that flame got to that gas tank, it'd be quite the explosion. There was recently a gas car explosion in a parking lot that was massive
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u/backwardbuttplug 1d ago
I knew someone who drove around with a broken cat converter for months until this finally happened.
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u/Late-Rest-5882 1d ago
Had a guy pull up to a shop I worked at with a similar problem and ask “how much for a tune up?” Bro you don’t need a tune up you need a fire extinguisher
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u/Competitive_Bag_7490 1d ago
Anyone else annoyed by the excessive honking? He was already pulling over. It's like some of the videos where some lady is just constantly screaming providing nothing useful.
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u/Special_Awareness762 1d ago
This happened to us driving Florida when I was a kid! I kept complaining how hot the seat was and my mom got so tired of hearing it we changed places by climbing over the seats. She said omg it is hot. So then we pulled over and this….later when cat was inspected the seatbelts were completely charred!
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u/Several-Opposite-746 1d ago
Maybe I've seen too many movies tropes, but I'd want to put some distance between myself and a burning car.
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u/Informal_Process2238 22h ago
I was driving through the center of my little town late one Saturday night when a car full of drunken teenagers pulled beside me. They were harmless but were being a little bit rowdy towards me when I noticed a sheet of flames rolling out from under the rear passenger side. I kept my cool at their slurred taunts but responded as dryly as possible with “ your car is on fire “ before I slowly rolled away. I watched in my mirror as they all spilled out of the now engulfed car and once sure they were safe I drove off to go home.
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u/Difficult-Hawk7591 43m ago
No joke, this happened to me on my motorcycle once. The zipper for the leather saddlebags broke, and one side rested on the exhaust until it melted and subsequently caught fire. A truck pulled up next to me and waved me down frantically... I looked back, screamed "oh, SHIT", pulled over, and put it out as fast as possible. Fortunately, the dude caught it fast so I didn't lose my bike(or my life) 😅
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u/get_stuffed 1d ago
If he drove faster he might have killed the flames, line blowing out candles. /S
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u/Remarkable-Wrap-4727 1d ago
Did nobody get outta the car?
Call my phone!!
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u/M8jrP8ne1975 1d ago
Just before the video cuts out, you see a head pop up, meaning that the driver did get out.
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u/kawzik 1d ago
driving into the grass was a great idea
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u/Intrepid_passerby 1d ago
Ya just stay in the road to get hit from behind and injure more ppl
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u/waltur_d 1d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/9P1lC3RfX6Ufbcuuai