Fire Breathers - a Flame Spewing Exhaust System

These cars are HOT - Literally. Make your hotrod live up to its name with a flame spewing exhaust system that is sure to get you noticed out on the open road. All it takes is simple mod and a little help from the Big Schwag.

Male: Afraid of a little fire scarecrow? Then change the channel because flames are back folks so we’re firing up the carbecue and killing few marshmallows along the way. Now you might not want to try this at home. But for you folks who want to make your hot rod a little hotter, we’ll teach you step by step how to turn a normal exhaust pipe into a fire breather. So keep that water standing by. I’m fired up folks for road rage. Hi folks, to Big Schwag, another episode of road rage coming up right now, what are we learning about Schwag where are you? We’re in Camarillo California, the home of the state loony bin but we’re not here to get crazy. We’re here to learn about flame throwers. Now flames and hotrods go together like the schwag and giant turkey legs. And with today’s technology, you’ll get guys shooting flames 100 feet in the air. But this stuff’s on the extreme edge of car culture so I’m not going to recommend it for the average weekend cruiser. But I know a lot of folks out there that do want to spin a little exhaust fire the old fashioned way so to learn how you can turn up the heat, the schwag is going to pay a visit to the man, the myth, Brian Allen. The fire doctor. Male: Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Allen, now, we’re in Camarillo California Brian. This place is not known in my opinion for cars, it’s known for the state mental hospital and here you are, you’ve got your own shop out here, what’s going on? Brian: There’s a lot of hotrod stuff going on in Ventura County. Male: Brian’s been making the hotrod flame kits for 12 years at his show hotwire nostalgia. Before that he worked in the film industry wiring up pyrotechnics so this man knows how to make things go boom. Okay folks, time to meet our flamethrowers to be. Victim one, Mike Gates, you can just call him Gator. Mike’s had a lot of hotrods over the years but he’s never breathed fire until now. Male: Putting flames on it is just going to be just make it twice as much fun. Male: Now, Mike’s installing one of Brian’s $75 hotwire kits on his 31 model A coupe. This is my kind of ride folks. Open roof and a little rough around the edges. Male: You’ve got more of a ratroddish car here. Male: I prefer hotrad to ratrod. Male: Very hotrod. Male: The schwag’s only been here five minutes and I’m already offending people. But come on, it looks like you could stick your foot right through the hole and stop like Fred Flintstone. If it’s not ratroddish, I’m not sure what it is. I just hope he doesn’t catch this thing on fire. Male: It’s made of wood right there. Male: Now our next victim has a slightly more polished ride. Check out this sweet canary yellow 36 Ford five window coupe. Ventura California native Wayne Rhodes spent four years building it. Now, he wants to turn up the heat. Male: I want to be able to throw the flames at car shows when we take them so it can draw an audience around the car and everybody can see it. Male: Can you put flamethrowers on any car and put it on a Rolls Royce if I wanted to? Male: You can't put them on a car with a catalytic converter. Pretty much, there are ways around it but basically, they’re for carbureted cars with no catalytic converters. Male: Okay folks, Brian’s pretty much broken this down into a three step process. In just a few hours, we’ll be roasting marshmallows. Male: Step one in mounting flamethrowers, you take your bung, you mount it inside the exhaust pipe which will then hold your spark plug which will ignite the gas to produce flame. Male: Okay, let’s get rolling folks. The first thing we have to do is drill a hole right here into the top of the tailpipe. Now, if you’re not a welder, I strongly recommend you get this done at a muffler shop. What they’ll do is weld the bung into the pipe right down there and then the sparkplug fits right down into it. There you go folks. Male: Alright, we’re done with step one, I can see we’ve got our bungs in there welded. We’ve got our sparkplugs screwed on so what do we do from here Brian. Male: Next thing is mounting all the components. We have two coils, one for each pipe, we’ll mount these in the trunk depending on the car. On Wayne’s car, we mounted them under the fender. On this car, it’s more convenient to mount them in the trunk and we have a control box. This is what actually makes everything work. It will be mounted back here in the trunk and then Wayne’s we’re also mounting it in the trunk and we have a switch to mount on the dashboard which controls the whole system and once everything’s mounted, we go on to step three which is wiring it. Male: Okay now each car will have one of Brian’s hot boxes and two coils, one for each tailpipe. Now the hot wire hotbox basically pulses the current, fooling the coils into thinking they’re getting AC power. This lets the coils turn 12 volts into 25000, hence the spark. Now Wayne’s car is a little more finished so they’re going to try to hide the hotbox. Gator’s not worried too much about hiding anything but remember, shh, it’s not a ratrod. Now while these guys mount the hotboxes, I want to show you a flamethrower that I do not suggest building at home. This fire breather is the brain child of John Saragardi from Oakland California. Male: It’s heated out front, we’re going to hurt somebody. Male: The base vehicle is a – Canadian meter made car built in Sacramento. By adding propane tanks, a plenum tank and a vortex chamber blaster, the meter made has been transformed into the alpha fox. Male: The SS alpha fox is for my wife. She’s foxy and they had a camp with the planet of the hoochies. I don’t know if you notice the logo on the door there. Planet of the hoochies so a bunch of hoochies got together and named it the SS alpha fox. Male: Now, this hoochie mama flame blaster is wired to a control box. The two green buttons are for up and down. The red button in the middle, for fire. Now, there’s also a fire jet that shoots flames out the back. Hey, just make sure you check behind you first. After entering the plenum chamber, the liquid propane needs a few seconds to reload. Male: So you can see it’s kind of starting to freeze up here. That’s because it’s converting fusing energy from the outside to convert from liquid to gas. That’s how a refrigerator works and we’re thinking of putting a little beer cozy on this so I can keep my beer cold while we’re shooting out fire. Male: So there we are, talking to John about law enforcement issues when lo and behold, it turns out they really don’t like the fire shooting backwards towards the crowd, go figure. As Johnny Saragardi deals with Johnny Law, let’s check back in on our boys. Male: It looks like Wayne is mounting some kind of wires. What’s he doing here? Male: He’s making up sparkplug cables that run between the coils that we mounted in the back to the spark plugs that are mounted into the exhaust system. Male: And then we’re going to have a shut off switch. Why can't we be running the car and still shooting flames? Male: Because there’s no gas to burn. That’s how the system works. It shuts down your ignition, your engine’s running on momentum. At the same time it’s running on momentum, it’s pumping raw gas out the exhaust pipes. The control box takes over, fires the sparkplugs, you light the gas, you get flames. Male: So the guys have the coils and hotboxes mounted. Soon, they’ll have to run the wires up to the front. Remember how Gator got mad when I called his hotrod a ratrod? Guess what we found, when they were pulling up the seats to lay the wiring? Male: I said ratrod, you said no hotrod and now it looks like there’s a partially decomposed rat underneath the seat. I knew this was a ratrod. Male: Okay folks, we’re closing in on flames. Male: Now, you’re going to start messing with the ignition. Male: We’re going to disconnect the ignition so that we can bypass it with the flamethrower switch. Male: So now, with the flamethrower switch, right as you push it, it will cut the ignition of the car, hit and activate the sparkplug. Male: That’s exactly how it works. When you hit the button, it bypasses the ignition and reverts the power to the flamethrower box. Male: So we’re going to have flames shortly. Male: One important thing here folks. Disconnect the battery so you don’t catch anything on fire working on the ignition. You see, we want fire. We just want it on our terms. Now the hotwire kit doesn’t necessarily guarantee a certain size to your fire. It can be anywhere between a foot to 6 feet depending on the size of the engine, the carburetion, the fuel octane, the heat of the exhaust pipe and so on and so on. Male: This thing will probably shoot really good flames because it’s got a short exhaust system which means the pipes will get very hot. It has no mufflers and it’s got a very powerful motor with big carburetion. Male: But first, we need to make sure we get good spark. Let’s check Gator first. Male: Perfect. You did have a great spark. Male: Okay, Gator’s rolling. But over on Wayne’s car, we’re getting a little gremlin. The spark is only working on the driver’s side. Male: The coils are bad or something is not grounded right or something. Male: Something is rotting in Denmark. Male: While the guys try to troubleshoot their nonsparking spark, I want to jump over to the east coast for a minute and introduce you to the king of fire. Dangerous Dave. Male: You think it’s hot today? Wait till you feel the heat from the fire. Male: Now dangerous Dave doesn’t brag about being the king of fire. He’s happy just shooting flames with his crew and putting on a show for the crowd. Of course being top dog, people are always looking to knock you off. Male: Once in a while I get to Florida, I get challenged down there. I didn’t want to do it but the guy insisted on it so I did it and he never even shook my hand. He just turned around and walked away. He shot about 30 foot in the air and I shot a good 100 foot in the air. Male: Dave’s a member of Flames R Us, a car club specializing in cool cars and big fire. Now these guys aren’t doing this with some kind of crazy Canadian meter made, no. these are classic hotrods with serious paint jobs. You’ve got your 61 Buick Electra four door, a 61 Ford galaxy starliner and let’s not forget Dee Wilson in her hot 72 Buick Riviera boattail. Female: I’m playing with fire which I said I would never ever do. You know that word never, it always come back to hit you in the face. Male: Now, the club runs a lot of different cars but the flame systems are pretty much the same folks. It’s basically a two stage process. Male: In this three gallon fuel cell, we have Coleman fuel. That’s pumped out with 125 psi Mercedes Benz fuel pump through a furnace nozzle. It’s stuck back in the pipe, sprays it out past two sparkplugs in each pipe which are ignited by 1 kd ignition box for each sparkplug. Male: Now, that gives him his starter fire. Think of this as a pilot light because we’re not done folks. Over here in this purple tank, you’ve got a two to one kerosene Coleman lantern fuel mix that’s pressurized with liquid nitrogen between 200 and 500 psi depending on the system. Male: Then our pressurized fuel will blow up through this nozzle and through the starter fire which will ignite it, then you have your big fire. Male: Big fire is right. But it’s actually the starter fire that’s the one you have to worry about. The big flame blasts at an angle away from your car. The starter flame boils behind the car. So to protect those paint jobs, the club uses bracket mounted stainless steel plates. They also use welding planks. Male: NASCAR uses 200 miles an hour duct tape and we use the 2500 degree duct tape. Male: Now Dangerous Dave and the Flames R Us folks tell us that later on, they’re going to do a wall of fire. That we’ll have to see but first, let’s head back to check on our boys. Male: You’re hitting the button? We’re still not getting anything. Male: I’m the guy who knows anything. Bikes and cars, you can get everything built and when it comes to the last moment with the wiring, something always goes wrong. Male: Brian thinks the problem may be in the coils. Alright, we don’t have fire yet and I’m getting hungry. Time to run a line to the positive end of the coil that we know is working. Alright, here we go. Male: Yes, we’ve got tons of spark, it’s beautiful. Male: Turns out, Wayne had a short in one of the coils. Male: Mike bought new coils. Wayne used used coils. Male: They were having problems with the wiring and they couldn’t get spark down to the sparkplug so the flame doctor, the fire guru, Brian Allen comes over with his tackle box and he’s look at this, how do you figure this out I don’t know but he did. Male: We have spark. Everything’s looking good. You’ve got nice blue flame. Blue spark down there. What’s next? Male: The last thing to do is we’ve got to start the cars, hit the buttons and just make sure it kills the ignition. If that happens, then we know everything is as it should be and we’ll be getting flames, we will have fire. Male: Once again, we’ll have fire. Male: Alright folks. We’re in the home stretch but now, Brian’s having an issue getting Wayne’s switch to cut the engine. Back to the spaghetti ball. Alright Wayne, what’s the deal with the flames man? Male: Want a marshmallow. Male: No thanks. Male: Okay. I wasn’t going to give him one anyways. Male: Turns out it wasn’t Wayne’s fault after all. The culprit, color coding confusion up at the dash. Male: And I had picked the wrong one because there was two purple wires. Male: Remember folks, no shortcuts, even when you’re the fire doctor. Always color code your wires and now the time has arrived. Male: Okay, you’re basically going to rev it up. You’ll hit about 3000 rpms, you’ll hit the button, floor the gas. Then you’ll hear the flames and when the motor starts to slow down, you let off on everything. Male: Okay folks, here we go. Male: It takes a little practice like I said. Male: Nothing broke, then it’s a success. Male: I think we better let Dr. hotwire show us how it’s done. What a show off. Okay but today won't be complete until I roast some marshmallows. That’s what I’m talking about, burn baby burn. Yes. Nothing like raw gasoline smores. Male: Not much of that marshmallow left. I don’t think I’m going to eat that but wow. You come eat it with all that gas on it. Nutty people in Camarillo. You see what I’m saying? You see why the state nuthouse was here? We learned that you could do this on a good cheap budget. You can put flamethrowers on anything and why not, it’s road rage, you should do that and since we’ve got the cars here, and we still have got a little sunlight, we’re going to go out for a little ride and scare the local town’s people. Male: And while we do that, I’ll send you back to Pennsylvania for the grand finale. Flames R Us and their wall of fire. Holy cow, ladies and gents, you’re not going to get a marshmallow near that. Our cameramen can feel the heat from across the field. So one last burning question, in the field of fire, how high can be go? With Dangerous Dave and the Flames R Us crew, it would appear that the sky is the limit.