Fire Fire! My Gladiator burned down

[20Gladiator22]

Dang! My neighbor kid had his old GMC diesel go up in smoke last fall. Vehicles go up fast! Within two minutes the cab was fully engulfed. Took four extinguishers to put it out. Firemen were a little bummed we beat them to the punch.

Like everyone has said, just thankful no one was hurt...other than pride we put into customizing our toys.

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[CoachA]

My condolences. What a nightmare. Were that my truck, I would have cried.

 

[Mojave2021]

Sorry for your loss. I was just about to book an appointment to fix my broken start stop feature. Maybe I’ll just disable it permanently instead.

 

[Zybane]

Another lesson unfortunately why you only take a vehicle to the dealer as an absolute last resort. And then you must check their work to the best of your ability. A lot of the people working on vehicles these days don't give two craps about doing a decent/safe job. I've experienced a crazy amount of bad work from many different dealerships.

 

[Zybane]

Surprised they let you stay that close to it. It could've gone big boom! Glad everyone is safe

Cars don't explode. That's Hollywood silliness.

 

[DAVECS1]

I am pretty sure I know what happened. The batteries are separated by a run relay. You start is and drive away and this relay keeps the batteries separated, when you come to a stop the relay will remain open, until you take off again. Then the relay closes and allows the alternator to charge both batteries. My guess is the bottom battery was hooked up backwards and when the relay closed it went nuclear. If he was 2 to 5 minutes from a stop and go, that would be a pretty strong correlation. I wondered about this situation when I had mine all apart. Easy to do and catastrophic.

 

[chorky]

mmm this makes me so angry.... I won't even dare type out what I would do in that situation with the dealer not giving a rats a$$. They wouldn't be around long thats for sure.

 

[ScottHarr_JT]

Oof...


But seriously, glad no one was hurt and I hope you can get a replacement ASAP. I’d be super bummed about it.

 

[foxman350]

Hmm, possible Jeep dealer statements:

"TEh LArgE TyrEs CAUseD thE FirE"

"TEh AfTErmARket BUmpEr wAs Too HeAvy CAusing OVerHeat ANd FiRe"

You joke, but my first Jeep in 2004 had transmission issues, Jeep came with 31”MTR’s and I put 33” MTR’s they tried to tell me it was the aggressive tread on my tires that had caused it.

 

[Blade1668]

Sorry for your loss, I hope it works out. I started Monday night bad and Tuesday was worse but in no way near yours.

 

[skindata]

This is absolutely horrible to watch, I couldn’t even imagine what I would be feeling like watching one of my vehicles burn like that.

 

[Whiskerbiscuit]

IKR?!?

I'd be...

a[rigjerp'[evm[airng['qoearkmnf[qenrg['paslkdmjv[poym,nutenmbpi.hkju,mhjkm,hjku,

... all over the keyboard.

from a professional nerd... what did the keyboard ever do to you!?

sorry about your truck. that really sucks, which I am sure you have heard a million times. Im sure your next build will be even better though with lessons learned from this one.

steve

 

[DobaMark]

Sorry for the truck!

But everyone thinking that disabling stop/start would have prevented the fire is incorrect. Even assuming it had something to do with the dual battery wiring, disabling stop/start doesn't eliminate that wiring entirely.

 

[JTR178]

I would sue that dealership into oblivion.

 

[TwelveGaugeSage]

Cars don't explode. That's Hollywood silliness.

I dunno about all that. Hollywood of course dramatizes it, but as a former firefighter/fire science major and current worker in the fuels logistics industry, they can and do occasionally explode(often a BLEVE). I was taking a diesel receipt from a tanker a few months ago and the driver was showing me pictures from his truck hauling gasoline that had a wheel bearing catch fire eventually taking the whole tank of 10,000 gallons of gasoline with it.

This one looks like it probably had a whole tank of gas that dropped out suddenly and quickly during the fire:

And this one they said airbags, but my money is on the batteries going BLEVE.

Of course, catastrophic ones like that first one are pretty rare, and in OPs case, the fire wasn't near the fuel tank, so while a battery exploding is possible, turning into a fuel air bomb wasn't too likely, lol.

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