I was in the salvage yard today and i seen alot of gm cars with the 3800 engines burn up, what causes these engines to go up in flames?

Usually the people that never followed through on the fuel pressure regulator recall. This doesn't seem to be a mechanical issue with your car, so I'll move it to the proper section (this is the mechanical problem area of the forum, not for general questions).

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There have been a few instances of a short in the underhood fuse box of 00+ models that caused a conflagration.

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Also valve cover gaskets leaking oil onto the rear manifolds if im not mistaken

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Also there was the issue with the transmission cooler lines coming apart and dumping on the manifolds as well in the series 1.

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~Randall~


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That's what GM claims, the oil leaks, but I feel it's another issue on the GP's. It was also the front manifold, if I'm not mistaken.

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I have seen a lot of burned up GM W and H Bodies...

I always look to see where the fire most likely originated from... There are 2 that are very common and the first is the Fuse/Relay box on the passenger front of the car... Another is the fuel lines that start leaking at the rail..

Now if the fire started on the passenger side, sooner or later the fuel lines are going to go up, and what ever fuel there is in the line and the rail is going to burn.. It just goes downhill from there..

I don't think the oil fires are as common, but if not paid attention to, a fire can occur if you valve caover gaskets are bad.. I believe this also had to do with the type of heat shield that GNM was using on the front manifold for a while..

The other is the upper plenum going KaBoom due to not having the regulator replaced under recall as well as a reflash of the PCM that was part of the recall..

is the regulator on top of the fuel rail? i remember having it replaces on my old engine, then when i got a used salvage engine, i remember the mechanic swapping out the fuel rail

On my 93, I had a pinhole leak in the nylon fuel line above the rear valve cover.
In looking for a used replacement line, most of the ones I saw had heavy chaffing in the bends next to the maxi-fuse panel.
The damage could not be seen until you removed the the plastic cover running along the firewall.

(When I did find a decent line, it only lasted a few months before a pinhole appeared in the same place - so I ended up just running new Nylon back to the fuel filter.)

The last time I was at the bone yard, there was one from this generation that looked like the fire originated in this general area.

This was on a 2000 which I bought last summer. I was literally driving the car home after purchasing it and it caught on fire. The engine was knocking real bad. My thought was that it threw a rod through the rear of the block and an oil fire started once the oil hit the exhaust manifold. The firefighters said it was a fuel ignited fire. Part of me thinks that's their cause for all auto fires, though.

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That would make sense as technically anything that burns is "Fuel"

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