After a brief test drive of my very recently completed E/M with a 351 Cleveland, I had a near disaster while putting the car into the garage. With the steering cranked all the way to one side and backing up the car, an instant flume of smoke appeared from under the hood, and people standing near-by started yelling that the car was on fire. In a near panic, I shut the engine down, left skin on the side pipe scrambling to exiting the car, and raised the hood. I was able to quickly extinguish the flames with a blanket and apparently suffered no MAJOR burn damage to the car.
Once everyones nerves settled down and administrating some emergency first aid on my badly buned leg, we discovered that the output hose from the power steering pump had blown apart where the hose enters the fitting. Once the fluid came into contact with exhaust header the fire was on. This hose was stainless steel with typical Earl's fittings at both ends. In fact, I have no rubber hoses in the car except one, the lower radiator hose. The power steering system is made up of the pump, remote reservoir tank, a small cooler (
oil cooler type), and of course the rack and pinion. The following link is to some early pictures of the car and some engine shots that give you an idea how the steering is laid-out (
http://www.geocities.com/gadavis.geo/index.html ).
Can someone explain how much pressure is generated by the pump and a theory is to what may have caused this to happen? I will be returning the hose to the shop who made it for me to have have it analyzed. The shop is a specialty outfit dedicated to fabicating custom braided units.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Nesato