Plumbed fire extinguisher

[Simon Marks - North Oxfordshire AO]

Hi,

When I took my car for its shakedown run on an airfield, I bought a hand held gas extinguisher to take with me to ward off evil spirits.  Now the car has passed IVA, prior to putting it on the road, I have fitted a plumbed in gas extinguisher to my (mainly roadgoing) Eleven,  I agree that the car sized AFFF (Aqueous Film Forming Foam) extinguishers have a poor record in saving cars - as has been said, their main reason for being is to buy extra time for the driver to get out of the car.  It is also no accident that fire engines are the size they are!  On a sprint/hillclimb, marshals are close by so help will be on the way quickly.  I have been involved in putting out a largish fire in a rally car on an event - we used two 9kg foam and two 9kg powder extinguishers to sort the job - and were directed by a person whose business was fire extinguishers and systems - so we were properly organised.

I also fondly remember Halon extinguishers and knocked down a few reasonably sized fires with quite small extinguishers - even an oil fire from a burst cooler hose with an extinguisher the size of a can of WD40 that used to be sold in the motorists shops.  Now, some 25 years (or so) on from the banning of halon extinguishers, halon replacement gases are available.  I forked out for a 2.25kg Lifeline Zero 360 system that has two nozzles in the footwells, one in the scuttle area and three more in the engine bay.  The nozzles can be seen as the little blue units in the photographs.

Obviously, I hope that I won't ever need to use it but I believe that it will have some worth on the road and on track days should the worst happen.

Simon