Well I guess I am a ricer then.... My car has been called alot of things, you're the first to say rice. I guess all the domestic guys are ricers too with there old muscle cars. You might want to check many local track requirements, many of them will require pins for cars within certian times.
As for the fire and nomex comments..... first off, the nomex gloves are pretty thin, nomex does not protect you from heat, but rather the flash that is involved with instant exposure to a flame, I think you are refering to structural firefighting gloves which have a significant amount of insulation in them. I open 3 or 4 hoods a month while they are on fire with them, takes a little practice, the gloves are clumsy like you said. The nomex Gloves I have go about up about mid forearm and provide just a enough heat insulation for a second or two of exposure, but you are right about not protecting my face or other body parts, my car is not worth a lifetime of burn scares.
As for the hood pooping up, if you have the pins installed, you still leave the spring mechanism inplace to get the hod up a few inches, you just disable the hood latch (the device that catches the hood when you pop it.) so you can get to pulling it up.
Your other statements about open a hood when a fire is present is of course correct. No agruement there, however in my case, the fire was in its early stage and I would have been able to easily manage the task quickly. Another point on an engine fire, depending of course what is burning, but many fires will burn themselves out when the hood is opened, you are actually allowing the engine fire to cool (elminating the thermal layering and build up of fire gases by the hood). You have to take into account that fire needs heat to burn, when the hood is down, the heat breaks down the plastics and rubbers which release the gasses which allow the burn to take place. This process is call pyroalysis, but this is getting way off base. Do however try to burn a rubber hose or fire resistant wire, it will burn itself out in open air, put a bunch of the stuff together in a enviroment where the heat is trapped and oxegen is still able to be consumed, the stuff will burn like crazy.
I did try as you mentioned to hit the fire with a Dry Chem from under the car, the manifold was simply blocking any agent from sificiantly stopping the fire. You statement about hitting the fire from under the car is absolutely correct, I do it all the time that way. The fire I had, when I realized I had a fire, was nothing, I could have blown it out, but it just kept growing and growing.
Moral of the story, be careful with fire, it wants to burn you.
P.S. - my hood does hold itself up by itself, My gas struts work great. All I needed to do is pop the hood and give it a push -> from the side of the car that was not involved in the fire at the time.
As for the fire and nomex comments..... first off, the nomex gloves are pretty thin, nomex does not protect you from heat, but rather the flash that is involved with instant exposure to a flame, I think you are refering to structural firefighting gloves which have a significant amount of insulation in them. I open 3 or 4 hoods a month while they are on fire with them, takes a little practice, the gloves are clumsy like you said. The nomex Gloves I have go about up about mid forearm and provide just a enough heat insulation for a second or two of exposure, but you are right about not protecting my face or other body parts, my car is not worth a lifetime of burn scares.
As for the hood pooping up, if you have the pins installed, you still leave the spring mechanism inplace to get the hod up a few inches, you just disable the hood latch (the device that catches the hood when you pop it.) so you can get to pulling it up.
Your other statements about open a hood when a fire is present is of course correct. No agruement there, however in my case, the fire was in its early stage and I would have been able to easily manage the task quickly. Another point on an engine fire, depending of course what is burning, but many fires will burn themselves out when the hood is opened, you are actually allowing the engine fire to cool (elminating the thermal layering and build up of fire gases by the hood). You have to take into account that fire needs heat to burn, when the hood is down, the heat breaks down the plastics and rubbers which release the gasses which allow the burn to take place. This process is call pyroalysis, but this is getting way off base. Do however try to burn a rubber hose or fire resistant wire, it will burn itself out in open air, put a bunch of the stuff together in a enviroment where the heat is trapped and oxegen is still able to be consumed, the stuff will burn like crazy.
I did try as you mentioned to hit the fire with a Dry Chem from under the car, the manifold was simply blocking any agent from sificiantly stopping the fire. You statement about hitting the fire from under the car is absolutely correct, I do it all the time that way. The fire I had, when I realized I had a fire, was nothing, I could have blown it out, but it just kept growing and growing.
Moral of the story, be careful with fire, it wants to burn you.
P.S. - my hood does hold itself up by itself, My gas struts work great. All I needed to do is pop the hood and give it a push -> from the side of the car that was not involved in the fire at the time.