Aren't many Vanagon fires fuel line (or fuel line connector) related?  Isn't one connector commonly called "the firestarter) because of its propensity to fail and spray fuel around, followed by a fire?  I have heard many times the business about spraying gasoline on hot metal surfaces without it igniting.  I'm not willing to try it except in amounts so small that I might not trust the result to represent what would happen when a lot of vapor was present in a very hot compartment.

All that said, I also suspect that many Vanagons have wiring and wiring connections that are in poor enough condition that they spark on occasion.  I have seen a vehicle (not a Vanagon) with random sparks showing up in the open engine compartment in the dark.  I don't suppose it ran wonderfully well, but it did run.

DMc

---- David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET> wrote:
> At 07:02 PM 12/4/2010, David Clarkson wrote:
> >  a vanagon westfalia that appeared to have had some sort of fire (probably
> >fuel  line related)
>
> Hi David -- I'm just curious what led you to the conclusion that it
> was probably fuel-line related.
>
> I'm not saying it wasn't, and it's certainly a very poor idea to have
> gasoline spraying around the engine room.  But unless gasoline
> behaves differently than it used to (and it might -- it's more of a
> mixture of heavy and light components than when I was young) you can
> spray it on a hot exhaust pipe without it catching fire* (whereas of
> course a small spark will ignite gasoline vapor).  Oil, OTOH, dropped
> on a hot exhaust will burn.  Under normal circumstances there aren't
> any sparks available in the engine room, unless of course the
> sparking inside the distributor or from the ECU and fuel pump relays
> can do it.  I'm guessing that with proper distributor cap/box seals
> it can't, but again I don't know for sure.
>
> *I think this was the basis of one of the Car Talk puzzles twenty
> years ago.  Not that I was young twenty years ago. <g>
>
> Yours,
> David

--
David McNeely