Engine caught fire

Now that my car could drive again I went to my nephew to show him the car but also to ask if I could use his car lift to have the excessive transmission oil drained. It turned out there is no drain plug, sigh. And removing the complete carter and oil was a bit to much. So instead we used a vacuum pump with a long hose going into the filler pipe. This worked out well and we took out about 0,75 liter. Starting the engine and measured it. Now it was close to the minimum which I considered to little – didn’t expect that taking out 0,75 liter would have made such difference knowing it was way above maximum. Perhaps the car should have been running a little longer to make it appropriate warm/hot for good measurement. In any case I added a little more back into it, about 0,25 liter. Whilst I was doing that and  the car was still running my nephew took a can of brake cleaner and wanted to identify if one of the vacuum hoses was leaking and thus resulting in the high idle RPM. When spraying with the brake cleaner the engine caught fire. Aaarrgh! We closed the hood and I jumped in the car to drive it outside, this to avoid the garage would caught fire as well. Meanwhile my nephew grabbed the fire distinguisher and once outside I opened the hood again. The fire was now almost out but some wires with “clothing” or greasy parts were still slightly burning which I managed to blow out by puffing.

Pffff, it’s another true story. On the 2^nd day of ownership my car was almost destroyed. Luckily the fire manifested only very shortly so at first sight there was no damage. I started the car again and all was still working ok. On second inspection however we could see the distributor cap was bursted! Still it was running somehow. I moved the car on the parking space and again I got home in a
different car and with the XJS out of sight.

So to fix the broken cap I could start searching around to order one. I was pleasantly surprised about the friendly prices (compared to Ferrari). Still many of the known Dutch parts suppliers did not offer them and if available it was not on stock. In the UK, Germany or Ebay there were plenty directly available. But that would mean long lead times. In the end I found this company http://www.sngbarratt.com/  which seemed to have a Dutch store. So I called them the next morning to be sure. Very good service and prices so I made the order instantly. Next to the distributor cap I also ordered a new rotor. Potentially it could be damaged as well due to the bursted cap else
I consider it preventative maintenance and don’t have to worry about it for a long time. Including shipment this costed me only 55 Euro.To give you an idea what this would have costed if this happened on my Ferrari and ordered these items at superformance.co.uk It would have costed me around 500 Euro (Incl. VAT and shipping). I know cheaper resources so I know I can obtain this set for about 250 Euro. Still this means that Ferrari parts are 5 times more expensive, hows that! Reason for bringing this up is that I know off a jaguar distributor cap that appears to be compatible for the 400i

Anyway, an afterthought that occurred to me is that when I had to drive the car outside while burning is that it must have been moving into R easily without causing friction. I don’t recall exactly but surely I did not had to intervene (there was no time for that either). Well, I will find out on the next attempt, would be nice if the oil drainage did the trick.

Another afterthought I had was when searching around for the right part numbers and ran into a diagram that shows the setup:

It also showed the distributor cap had two vacuum hoses (11) to it. If those happened to be “ leaking” I can imagine that this could have set off the fire. Clearly he was not spraying on the manifolds or such and furthermore the engine was not very hot either.  It might also explain why the cap bursted/cracked.

Today the parts arrived and coming Saturday I will get it replaced. I can already sense it’s going to be a nasty and difficult job. Hopefully all goes fine and I can have my afterthoughts verified.