I never thought I would sell my Roadrunner. - Bought it back in '75 after I graduated high school. As the saying goes, 'I drove it like I stole it". I raced it at a few drag strips back in the 70s. The best e.t. I ever had was a 13.21. I'd always kept the original 383 in it but built and rebuilt it a number of times trying to tweak more power out of it.
One winter morning in 1980 I'd started the car and then went back inside the house to let it warm up. After about 5-10 minutes I hopped back in the car to leave for work. When I pushed on the accelerator, nothing happened. The engine didn't respond. Then the motor shut down. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I then noticed that there was a slight bit of smoke beginning to roll out from the edges of the hood. I got out of the car and popped open the hood.
I about crapped my pants.
There was a ball of flames so big that I couldn't even see the engine. Quickly I slammed the hood shut and went running for the garage to grab a fire extinguisher. About half way there I noticed that I could still hear the electric fuel pump running on my car so I turned around (half expecting it to blow up any second) and dove into the Roadrunner to shut it off. I was in full panic mode. I jumped back out of the car and ran to the garage. I grabbed the extinguisher and upon returning to the Roadrunner, I threw the hood open, pointed the extinguisher and - nothing happened. It was empty.
Still expecting there to be an enormous explosion at any time, I threw that extinguisher down to the ground and went running to another shop building to get an extinguisher from it. This one worked and within a few seconds the fire was out.
But there was a lot of damage done. Almost all of the engine bay wiring was gone. What remained had no insulation on the wires. After calling into work to tell them I wouldn't be able to make it in, I began the task of patching up and replacing all of the wiring. By the end of the day I had everything working again. There was absolutely NO wire color coding in my quickee repair job. But I was able to make it to work the next day.
Although I was never 100% certain what had caused the fire, it was obvious that fuel had been spraying over the engine from the area (above my right valve cover) where a plastic fuel filter had been. My speculation was that the new 'gasohol' that had been showing up in the filling stations had eaten through my plastic filter and sprayed gas onto my headers. At this time I had heard several stories about many plastics being incompatible with gasahol and that it could dissolve some plastics.
I still drove my car for the next few years but the quick fix I'd done to the wiring wasn't very good. Electrical problems plagued me until I decided to park it.
It had been sitting under the trees on my uncle's farm for a few years after I stopped driving it in the mid 80s. Meanwhile I got married and any free time I had was taken up with working on a house and spending time with family. My uncle was constantly pestered by curiosity seekers that had spotted the bright yellow/orange flames on the black car as they'd drive by. I turned down all prospective buyers.
A guy that worked at the same factory I did had been hounding me for years in an effort to get me to sell him the car. He hadn't seen it since I'd stopped driving it. Even though I had been putting him off, he convinced me to let him see the car again. It was dirty. Leaves had begun to find their way into the trunk gutters and engine compartment where they were starting to hold moisture. Without attention rust would eventually become an issue. I did not want to sell the car! My dream had been to one day see my kids drive it. But I didn't want to see it rust away either. So I made the guy a deal. I'd sell him the car for $150 if he'd agree to keep it, restore it and not just 'flip it' to someone else. I had already turned down over 10 times that amount of money for it but I wanted the car to stay local. I figured that at least I would be able to point to the car in the future and let my kids know that it was my first car. Understanding that some day he might run into financial difficulty himself and have a need to sell it, I also made him promise me that I'd have first dibs on getting it back.
It turned out that he did flip it. He had it resold before it had left our property. He made almost 20 times what he paid for it. The last I'd heard of it was that it was in Lincoln, Nebraska. - That is, until I saw my door at the swap meet.
I often wonder where my old runner went but never bumped into part of it like you did :missing:
