Outboard fire

M

marvin4239

New member
Last week while I was cruising the St Johns I pulled into Crystal Cove Marina north of Palatka for fuel. While I was waiting on the dock master at the fuel dock I noticed what was about a 20' cat pulling in behind me. It was made by Carolina Skiff and I had never seen one by CS so I was watching it as it approached the dock. It had twin Honda 90's on it and one apparently died just before the boat reached the dock. The captain was trying to restart it as it drifted up to the dock. It sounded as if it was flooded. All of a sudden I heard what sounded like a shotgun blast and the cover blew off the port engine into the water and flames were shooting up from the engine. I went for my fire extinguisher as did the dock master. The captain of the CS grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the flames in about 30 seconds. He fired up the starboard engine and retrived the cover that was floating upside down. The boat looked fairly well maintained and had a large dealers logo on the side. I'm wondering if this was and isolated incident or has anyone else had a problem similiar with Hondas? They loaded the CS on a trailer at the ramp right by the fuel dock. The motor didn't have any obvious damage but it could have been pretty bad had he not extinguished it as quickly as he did.
 
I do know that Honda did a recall on the BF15 and BF20, of which my tin boat engine was one of the recalled. Something to do with the fuel bowl and a risk of fire. I wonder if there was a problem on some of the larger engines?

Steve
 
For an outboard to actually catch fire there has to be gas and spark...I have seen flooded motors with fuel in the cowling..... but never ever have I seen a spark ...... that is an amazing thing... fluke I think... not impossible...and glad it was not me.. but ya just don't think a modern outboard would do that... another reason I don't like carubretors...wish Yamaha would inject their smaller motors.... almost be worth trading in my 40 hp motors and going to the 50ho just to get injection.

Joel
SEA3PO
 
He was cranking it over when it blew the cowling off. It sounded really rough when he was trying to crank it as if it was backfiring through the carb. The flames were coming from the carb area. The amazing thing was how it blew the cowling off. He was lucky it landed upside down and floated or he may have lost it. The motors appeared to be fairly new. This particuliar marina had a bad fire some months ago in the office area so I bet it really freaked the dock master. Shock me up enough that I went on to Georgia Boy Marina on the other side of Palaka for fuel.
 
I don't know about Honda but Yamaha have a plastic cover over the intake of the carburetor as a flash guard..... supposed to prevent a fire in case of a backfire... probably blew that off too...

Joel
SEA3PO
 
Inboard gas engines are required to have a backfire flame arrestor, but outboard motors are not.

For a 4-cycle to backfire, the ignition or valve timing would have to be off. The ignition is electronic, so an ignition failure is possible. The valves are controlled by the timing belt which could skip. Both of these sound unlikely on a new motor, but who knows?

This is a good reason for us to check our own fire extinguishers.

We all have more than one extinguisher, right?
 
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