Magnesium Blocks?

Had to do my compulsory Fire Fighting lecture for the year today and the firies we're tellling a story of VW's having a block made of magnesium and when they have an engine fire and hit it with water it makes the whole thing go up more.

Its not the first time i've heard this story from a fire fighter but never heard it round the VW grape vine. is this just a firie myth?

Fire myth revolves around the fuel line rupturing and leaking onto sparkplugs and then BANG... make sure your fuel line has an "o" ring on the tin ware where the fuel line goes through to prevent this. also have hose clamps on all fuel lines...

Magnesium does make a good fire.... nice and hot like the white hot intencities of 1000 suns ........ hot!!!!

No, Magnesium will burn hot enough to spilt the hydrogen oxygen bond in water. so if you add water you are adding oxygen

Fire!!

Not a myth.

They do generally start from a simple faulty fuel line or connection. But once the fire starts and takes hold, you need more water than a fire engine carries, or can pump through the hoses, to put the sucker out. It needs to be cooled to a temperature below the ignition temperature of the mag.alloy.

Quite often dumping a load of sand (or similar) on it to exclude air also works.

BTW
What's a compulsory firefighting lecture?

loves to burn under water...looks pretty at night time..

how hot does it have to get before it will actually burn?

We took and old case fishing on the beach and threw it on the fire. Lit up our whole camp for hours. Could see exactly what we were doing. Highly recommend just do it away a little from your camp as it is got a little too bright.
T54

pete wood wrote:how hot does it have to get before it will actually burn?

600 - 700 deg C

some mag/alloys and powders will ignite below 500 deg C

[ Edited on 4-7-2006 by 56astro ]

[ Edited on 4-7-2006 by 56astro ]

throwing an old vw block in a bonfire is always good value, specially if its still got a bit of old oil around LOL

just make sure u have ur sunnies handy :thumb

Joel

how can you tell which ones are 'for the fire'. Ive got an old 1180cc or what ever with the cast alternator support, with this burn?
vs

what people fail to see as far as magnesium case fires is... if the fire is hot enought to ignite the actual magnesium... the car is fucked anyway.

700 degrees is a lot of heat...

lol, as schmo said... 😀

DO beware, we used to burn little ribbons of magnesium at school, HELL BRIGHT!!!

and it does do permanent damage to ur eyes if u look directly at it!

Be fun to chuck in. so whose donating an old box for a valla bonfire?

howzabout that old semi-auto one o yours chris? :P 😂

Some years ago I went to a freezing cold winter cracker night (not Guy Fawkwes night) party on a farm just inside the NSW border near Canberra. They had spent days collecting all the fallen timber on the property and had built a bon fire that was as big as a small house. They had scattered several VW cases in the fire and when they went up you could not look at the fire and we all had to stand back about 20 metres more, the heat was so intense.

Marshmellows anyone!!😎 Bring your *really* long sticks and sunnies!!
- Adam

Years before getting into Volkswagens, my cousin (who's father drove a Kombi), my brother and myself bought an old cracked VW box from a local wrecker as we needed the magnesium for the fireworks we were making. We used filings and drillings (swarf) in seperated containments within the secondary charge, and woohoo, what a show. Got some good altitude with the cannon we used to launch with too. Might be considered dangerous, but still much more successful and far safer than NASA's efforts.

N.B. Important. To anyone in law enforcement reading this, the story never happened and I don't even exist. To anyone else, "them was the days"...

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA...OMG HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA...oh dear I think I wet myself :duh...HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHLMAO!!!😂