Just found this news story local to me:-

Jaguar XK catches fire in Surbiton while owner is away on holiday (From Surrey Comet)

XK8 caught fire while owner away on holiday. Doesn't specify age of car but
I wonder how they came to the conclusion about the passenger door electrics.
Any other cases of this kind of problem?

 

From a journalist that'll be more by guesswork than facts.

I had a look on the London FB website for further details on the incident but it's not on the list of fires attended so it must have been a minor incident to them.

You'll be relieved to hear we haven't had members reporting spontaneous combustion incidents with their XK8/XKR's.

Graham

 

Thanks Graham,
Yes the story was a bit 'fact-lite' - not even any photos!
Seems rather strange for an electrical fault whilst car is standing idle - could have been
smouldering ciggy!
Cheers.

 

After many years of British car ownership, one of the first aftermarket accessories I purchased for our Cat was a fire extinguisher. Hope to never use it, but one did keep the house from burning down when I shorted a battery lead on an MG-TC some years ago.

Seriously, a fire extinguisher should be nearby and ready to anyone who works on cars, regardless of the country of origin.

 

I actually had a Lithium Ion battery pack fail in my garage, had what I thought was a smoke detector in the garage, turned out it was a heat detector that never went off. fortunately the smoke detector I'd put in the kitchen caught it (turns out they normally don't put smoke detectors there anymore either due to false alarms). Now I have a proper Fire Extinguisher in the garage as I almost lost the house (I also have power vents to fast dump smoke which helped save my butt).

 

Sorry to hear about your near disaster enderle. Lithium Ion batteries are turning into tricky devices as the aerospace industry is now finding out. All well and good while they work, but they contain large amounts of chemically stored energy inside a very small package; this will always try to dissipate through the route of least resistance.

Wise words about fire extinguishers fotontom. I once knew someone whose E-tyoe caught fire whilst at speed on the motor/highway; he immediately floored it to an illegal speed and manage to blow the flames out WWII fighter style!