Dark Horse on fire and burns down (from stuck clutch)

[Bikeman315]

You know the order in which you become aware of things. That may or may not be the order in which things occurred. That's all I'm saying.

Good point, especially with a child in the car. There is no way anyone is thinking straight under the circumstances. Hopefully Ford will do a forensic inspection of the car and let @Vaporblue24, and us, know what happened.

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[Vaporblue24]

Fortunately I had a Dashcam in which the Micro SD card survived so I have 3 minute videos of the entire thing from my garage to fire truck

 

[Karguy]

Fortunately I had a Dashcam in which the Micro SD card survived so I have 3 minute videos of the entire thing from my garage to fire truck

Glad you are ok when your Mustang literally turned into a dark Horse and gave blue amber a new meaning…Hope you dont have to wait for your money too long as the dashcam wont be able to show what started the fire and the malfunction of the clutch…At least it is totaled and you dont have to worry about shoddy repairs and in the end it is only a car and thus material easily replaceable !

 

[Karguy]

Fortunately I had a Dashcam in which the Micro SD card survived so I have 3 minute videos of the entire thing from my garage to fire truck

Glad you are ok when your Mustang literally turned into a dark Horse and gave blue amber a new meaning…Hope you dont have to wait for your money too long as the dashcam wont be able to show what started the fire and the malfunction of the clutch…At least it is totaled and you dont have to worry about shoddy repairs and in the end it is only a car and thus material easily replaceable !

 

[Tomster]

I've heard of something similar with the GT350s. IIRC, there may have been a GT350 TSB pertaining to the hydraulic line which taps off the brake reservoir that was leaky and would drip brake fluid.

I suspect the guys clutch hydraulic line came loose or let go, dumping brake fluid onto his header and igniting.

This reminds me of a story when I was instructing at the Daytona International Speedway. I was doing a demo session for my student in his GT350 and we pulled into the garage area. As soon as the car stopped, I noticed a little bit of smoke coming from under the hood. My initial thought was a loose oil pressure sensor (it was common in the GT350).

I opened the hood to find a ball of fire in the area below the brake reservoir around the header. Before the fire got out of control (like you saw in the above photos), I grabbed a halon fire extinguisher and put the fire out.

So yes, the clutch symptom along with the location of the fire points to the reservoir leaking or a line coming loose.

 

[YamenGT650]

The comments in here are all over the place. The internet is a wild wild place. But the truth shall set me free.

Am glad you’re safe, hopefully you get through the process with fully compensation. Maybe after this whole thing you can give us a brief of what happened, lessons learnt could be useful to other owners.

 

[Tomster]

Good point, especially with a child in the car. There is no way anyone is thinking straight under the circumstances. Hopefully Ford will do a forensic inspection of the car and let @Vaporblue24, and us, know what happened.

I don't think ford will let anyone know what exactly happened. In an incident a long time ago, a guy on the track had an oil line let go and it dumped oil all over his header and ignited. Ford took the car, analyzed the problem, and based upon their findings, gave him a brand new GT350 R model. His user name on M6G was ITLRUN. Here is the photo....

He was upgraded to a GT350R, but Ford never went public on this one. I suspect that the same will be true for the OP.

 

[Karguy]

I've heard of something similar with the GT350s. IIRC, there may have been a GT350 TSB pertaining to the hydraulic line which taps off the brake reservoir that was leaky and would drip brake fluid.

I suspect the guys clutch hydraulic line came loose or let go, dumping brake fluid onto his header and igniting.

This reminds me of a story when I was instructing at the Daytona International Speedway. I was doing a demo session for my student in his GT350 and we pulled into the garage area. As soon as the car stopped, I noticed a little bit of smoke coming from under the hood. My initial thought was a loose oil pressure sensor (it was common in the GT350).

I opened the hood to find a ball of fire in the area below the brake reservoir around the header. Before the fire got out of control (like you saw in the above photos), I grabbed a halon fire extinguisher and put the fire out.

So yes, the clutch symptom along with the location of the fire points to the reservoir leaking or a line coming loose.

What you are saying makes a lot of sense ! When I had my SS1LE new I was looking for the powersteering fluid as I could not find it since it was electric finding out brake and clutch reservoir were the same…

 

[Tomster]

What you are saying makes a lot of sense ! When I had my SS1LE new I was looking for the powersteering fluid as I could not find it since it was electric finding out brake and clutch reservoir were the same…

Like I said, too much of a coincidence that his clutch pedal had issues and there was a fire. Again, I've seen it first hand at the track...... and single handedly saved the guys car while everyone else around wondered what to do.

 

[Bikeman315]

Like I said, too much of a coincidence that his clutch pedal had issues and there was a fire. Again, I've seen it first hand at the track...... and single handedly saved the guys car while everyone else around wondered what to do.

So do you think this a one off or should all DH M6 owners check under the hood?

 

[Tomster]

So do you think this a one off or should all DH M6 owners check under the hood?

It's an easy inspection. I don't own an S650 (yet, lol) but IIRC, the lower section of the brake reservoir has the clutch hydraulics line connected to it. The fitting should not be leaking or weeping any fluid and the connectors need to be secure. I think I used small zip ties on mine to make absolutely sure the line wouldn't come off. When I did inspect the clutch line on my 2017 triple yellow R, it was leaking fluid. The zip tie took care of it.

 

[Rapid_RedGT]

Stock or modded?

THIS!!!

 

[Bikeman315]

THIS!!!

The car owner already answered this. Stock.

 

[horned-toad]

Farley is to busy making EV's that no one wants...

and chock full of KNOWN engineering ERRORS. Stupid is not compatible with modern engineering.

And the recall of all Mustangs since 2020 for the low brake fluid signal was because some dork didn't bother to read the source code changelog, and the validation team didn't BOTHER to write a test to confirm CORRECT operation of the software.

4 billion in corrective action just points to failure to spend money where it matters - before the damn product ships!

The hose popping off the clutch reservoir has been KNOWN since 2015 and at NO TIME did Ford bother to change the SKU and get a hose that was 2 freaking inches longer. Oh no, let's keep using the same WRONG part for the next 12 years. They could have fixed this any time if an engineer BOTHERED to just LOOK at the damn thing. Or the guy on the floor who installs the line 50 times an hour could have hit the big red switch and halted factory production.


Same deal at Amazon, which buys $10 million dollars of hardware every single day. Some moron hardware engineer spec'd a SAS cable that was 2 inches too short. And the ODM who builds these systems by the rackfull every single day didn't say one word when their techs had to grab the cable and pull it as tight as a guitar string in order to make the connection. Oh no, they deploy 300 racks of these things all over the world and waste the operations team (and datacenter tech) time chasing disk farms that just disappear or bob up and down for no reason. Till the new kid (me) shows up and says, WTF is wrong with you people? How come nobody has set eyes on the thing? I literally walk up to the rack and the problem is right there staring you in the face.

Engineering and validation is done by hands and eyes. Not a god damn computer screen.
/rant

 

[Timry2]

I don't think ford will let anyone know what exactly happened. In an incident a long time ago, a guy on the track had an oil line let go and it dumped oil all over his header and ignited. Ford took the car, analyzed the problem, and based upon their findings, gave him a brand new GT350 R model. His user name on M6G was ITLRUN. Here is the photo....

He was upgraded to a GT350R, but Ford never went public on this one. I suspect that the same will be true for the OP.

And they were probably forced to sign a non disclosure agreement, so we may never here the truth

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