So, about that fire...

I've been asked to explain the fire from my January 6th comment, so here it is:

I had just hooked up the fuel line to the carb, and carefully filled the bowl through the vent tubes. There was 4 gallons of BP Premium 93 octane gasoline in the tank, oil in the engine, and a freshly charged battery.

So, I climbed in the car, put the key in the ignition, pumped the gas pedal once, and turned it.

BAM! It started. Just like that. I immediately ran it up above 2000 rpm, and began slowly cycling it from 2000 to 3000. Break-in instructions for the camshaft stated to do that for 30 minutes, so I had a CD in the CD player and a plastic tube on the exhaust pipe leading outside so I didn't gas myself.

You're thinking to yourself, "well, that plastic tube must have gotten hot and caught fire," aren't you? Well, you're wrong. It did melt though.

No, the fire was in the engine compartment. I was watching the oil pressure, which was excellent at 80psi. Water temp was coming up quickly, which was good. Then smoke started coming out of the engine bay. "No biggie," I thought to myself. "That's just the engine and header paint baking."

Well, the smoke got worse. Then there were flames. Ooops. I shut the engine off and got out of the garage. The flames went out quickly, and the smoke stopped. I walked back in. I noticed moisture on the hose end going into my fuel filter. I touched it, and gas started flowing out of the filter, down onto the valve cover, and then drained onto the header, where it ignited. There was a monster crack in the plastic filter housing.

So, thirty minutes and $2.99 at O'Reilly later, I had a new filter in place. Started it again, no problems. I got ten minutes into the cam break-in before I had to shut it down again and evacuate the garage because of the fumes. I have the car parked ass end into the garage. I'll get the suspension back on and roll it outside to finish the run-in.