Remote Control Car Fuel and Scaletrix
When I was 14 my generous father bought me and my brother remote control cars. These ran on a light oil and petrol mix (glowplug fuel).

For convenience we kept the fuel in a bicycle drinking bottle, the plastic kind that had a flip open top.

Now for some reason my father let me keep this in my bedroom, and this is where it all goes wrong. You see I like fire, and at 14 I loved fire, so experiments with the fuel were inevitable.

In our room we also had a 12v Scaletrix transformer, now I discovered if you attach 1 strand of a copper wire between the two main wires and turn it on, the wire glows very hot and if put on paper will scorch it.

So thus a great experiment was born, what happens if you put the wire over the top of the bottle and then turn the transformer on, you get a large column of flame out the top and a really big 'whooop' noise.

After 3-4 times and a general agreement that this was an ace new way to play with fire, we decided to take it one more step.

Lets put the wire into the bottle and close the lid.

Now, with my gained knowledge and my general understanding of how engines work, I probably would have stood back a bit more than I did, basically I was hold of the bottle when we flicked the switch.

What happened was the "glow plug" ignited the fuel in the container, this caused a huge expansion of gases in the bottle, causing the lid to open and expel most of the (thankfully) half full bottle (ignited) over my carpet, the bed next to me and my legs.

What happened next can only be explained as blind panic. First I took off my melting tracksuit bottoms, we then turned both the beds over on top of the flames, next we opened the wardrobes and starting heaping clothes over the rest of the flames.

Somehow this worked, we were sat on-top of a huge heap of clothes and stuff, but all of the fire was out. But we noticed that a small flame was creeping up the curtains, so we both stood-up to beat that out, and by doing this wafted round the heated up gases that were coming off the now extinguished fuel.
So the now large cloud of petrol gas hit the small flame on the curtains - this caused one huge flash of fire that, as well as taking all my arm/leg/eyebrow hair also stole all the remaining oxygen.

So that was it the fire was out, two minutes later I raised the balls to call downstairs to my dad, who came up and gave us a bollocking.

The main punishment was having no decent clothes for 12 months, or no bedding, curtains also no carpet in that room ever again (we moved 2 years later).

Somehow I survived my youth.
(Sp4mM0nkey I can go Anywhere!, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 16:10, 2 replies)

YOU LIE
If you have a bottle full of fuel it wouldn't ignite
you see it's not the fuel that burns it's the vapour and it needs sufficient oxygen to create a good explosion, something like 1:10 fuel to oxygen
you just need a lil bit of fuel at the bottom and then it would work
plus if it did what you said and went everywhere and ended up all over the room it would have caused far more damage.
if it exploded in the first place chances are your dad would have heard it and/or the fire alarm would have gone off or he would have smelt something queet wrong.

sorry to scrutinise :)
(Freddles, Tue 29 Jul 2008, 14:18, closed)

I no Lie
1: If you have a bottle full of fuel it wouldn't ignite
you see it's not the fuel that burns it's the vapour and it needs sufficient oxygen to create a good explosion, something like 1:10 fuel to oxygen
you just need a lil bit of fuel at the bottom and then it would work

The bottle was 1/2 full, plus it had just been opened many times and there was sufficient air to ignite the fuel

2. plus if it did what you said and went everywhere and ended up all over the room it would have caused far more damage.

The fuel didn't explode, the lid popped open as the the vapour of the fuel (remember its glow pug fuel that is more oil than petrol) lit and expanded, the fuel was pushed out of the bottle as a flaming oil fire, not an exploding petrol one

3. if it exploded in the first place chances are your dad would have heard it and/or the fire alarm would have gone off or he would have smelt something queet wrong.

It was upstairs in a Victorian built brick house, like I said the fuel popped the lid of the bottle and expelled the fuel. My dad was in the kitchen which was in an extension, it was 16 years ago, in an unmodernised house - there were no fire alarm, the fire lasted for about 30 seconds, not long enough for smoke to leach through a closed door and downstairs.

Cheers for posting
(Sp4mM0nkey I can go Anywhere!, Wed 30 Jul 2008, 10:20, closed)