Car Forum World

My dad built a volkswagen beetle "baha" some number of years ago. It has generally run really good. My brother borrowed it last week and while driving it, seemingly it started on fire. He had to tow it home. It has been suggested to me that because it had a possible crack in the distributer cap, it may have started on fire because of that. Does anybody have any ideas on if that may have caused it to catch fire? If not, what do you suppose think may have caused that? It wasn't a big flaming fire, just a tiny bit of flames I guess.

it is possible that a cracked distributor cap could arc externally particularly when wet to the carb and start a fire. But IMHO, more probably a wire chaffed trough and short circuited, particularly if there were any power wires that weren't fused. I feel if it had been a fuel fire, there most likely would not be much left. But again, that is just my opinion.

ASE Master Technician

most probably a broken fuel line or a broken diaphragm in the fuel pump

A cracked cap ALONE would not because a fire. There could must be a fuel leak too.

My guess is a fuel leak joint with a severly hot engine caused by your brother trying to "hot rod" a 40HP car

You can not have fire with out fuel amd since the fuel lines and the card both go over the distributer cap look for leaks. If gas is hitting the cap you'll get fire.