So, I have a friend who owns.. or, owned, a 2000 Honda Civic HX. The story goes he was leaving work on lunch, just about to go across the street to get something to eat. He smelt a heavy scent of gas, but he didn't think much of it. Or rather, didnt know what TO think. When he stopped at the light, there was suddenly a loud bang and flames started shooting out of the driver side engine bay in the front, he jumped out and was okay, but we want to know why it happened. He had installed a short ram air intake on his car about a week before and had been driving it around quite a lot and everything seemed fine. The car itself however, even before the intake was installed, was plagued with problems from the moment he got it. Maybe someone else has encountered this issue and knows what happened and if it had to do with the intake or not, or if something else was wrong. Was it a gas line leak that randomly appeared?

What happened?

 

The only logical answer is fuel related, not much could really be said about what happened there. The real question is, "What can be done to what's left?"

 

omfg are he alright?

​​​​​​Was it a gas line leak that randomly appeared?

 

I bet that car is a blast to drive.

 

Hottest thing on the road!!

 

I would never buy an HX, they blow.

 

It's 100% totaled. Nothing left that can be done. We were wondering and I came here in hopes of finding someone who jad a similar experience. We both wanna know what happened because we were planning on boosting our cars and making them nice project cars. But that went up in smoke... literally.

 

Yeah he's fine. He ran like his life depended on it. It kinda did.

 

Here are some photos

 

That's what it seems like.. Just a strong scent of gas and then that. Aside from that he said he was idling at a high RPM and it felt like it was about to stall out. Then that all happened.

 

Thats sad man, I hope all goes well for you guys after this. Hope he got a decent amount of money from insurance. Personally, I have no clue what could have led to that. Is there a hole in the head/block somewhere? I don't know tbh. If the engine dumped to much fuel in itself it would have flooded but it wouldn't explode. Can you pin-point where the explosion occurred?

 

well quite a few things could've caused this. Wondering why this car is still in a parking lot but hey Texas must be ok with cars like that driving around.

 

Thanks, and no. He said all seemed fine. No hole. It seems like it started on the driver side

 

Lmao that sucker aint driving anywhere. His managers said he could leave it there until he got it towed away.

 

V-tak kicked in!

 

Hard to say without actually being in the car when it happened. There had to have been a major leak somewhere either in the rail or a pressurized line that either caused a catastrophic missfire/explosion in the combustion chamber, or somehow made it's way over to the exhaust manifold and saturated it to the point a fire started.

I'm guessing the former, because I have a hard time seeing any way the fuel would make it's way all over to the other side of the head, and even then he probably would have seen smoke and smelled fire before actually hearing an explosion. Sounds like the car was just dumping fuel into the chamber.