After 15 minutes of driving down the highway it backfired once and then the front blew up like a bomb, in 15 seconds or less the whole front.

ARCTICDAWN907

MEMBER
1988 FORD E-SERIES VAN
0.7L
V8
2WD
AUTOMATIC
10,000 MILES

I was driving down the road after letting it run for about 45 minutes to an hour, and after 15 minutes of driving down the highway it backfired once and then the front blew up like a bomb. In 15 seconds or less the whole front was on fire and had burned through the roof.
My question is what would do that? Is this common for these? When it blew up it knocked me back pretty far and the hinges on the hood and driver's door was blown off of them both.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Thank you in advance for your answers/help in figuring out what happened. We lost 3 pets due to the fire and want answers.

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1 Reply

AL514

MECHANIC
4,792 POSTS

Hello, so sorry to hear about your experience. I can't imagine going through that. For something that dramatic to happen, there would have to be possibly gas leaking onto the lower intake manifold, pooling up then igniting from either just the heat from the engine or a spark plug wire arcing to the engine block. I see quite a few different listings for engine size for this year and the Ford E-Series Van, there is an E150, E250 and E350. Some gas some diesel engines, but for a fire like that, there definitely had to be a gas or diesel leaking on the engine, maybe a fuel line broke. But if you can provide more information on the vehicle or the VIN# we can get the exact setup it had.