Posts by Bill Schaffer

  • Another Slingshot Engulfed in Flames

    Well hello everyone, I believe I am the idiot that some of you have been asking to shed some light on my Slingshot catching fire. Well here's what I can tell you.
    I was at an event, my Slingshot was to promote my company so it was wrapped with a couple mods. I left last Sunday am around 8am and attend an event where the car sat till 3pm. I leave in the Polaris around 3pm and head through the city (San Francisco), no issues and stop in San Rafael, ca for dinner then head home. I am driving on Hwy 80 almost to Fairfield, ca when the car starts running weird, I slow down and pull to the slow lane at the same time a CHP officer on a bike passes me and pulls a car over in front of me. I decide to pull over behind him as the car is dying out. I pull about 100 yards behind him at that moment it seems the car was unusually warmer on my feet, I look down and see flames coming into the area where my feet are. I hop out quick at shit and start running to the CHP officer. He puts up his hand and I see him radioing it in, I turn around and take off my helmet and set it on the guard rail and see flames shooting out from under the drivers side of the car, I run back to get what I can. I was able to get my bag out from behind the passenger seat seeing the whole drivers side floor board on fire and spreading quick, I get to the back of the car before taking the first pic was about a min after getting out of the car. the 2nd pics is about 3 mins after and the final pic is about 5 min after it started. I watched the Slingshot burned to the ground in less then 10 min! Aluminum melts at 1200 degrees, you can see the cam gears and timing chain isnide the block of the arearly that was melted.


    I can't really say how it started except I believe it started on the drivers side some where in the engine compartment. The flames moved fast remember the car is nothing but plastic.


    Now to answer your questions on mods, it was not heavily moded at all. It did have a custom exhaust installed attached to the stock cat with pretty much the same configuration as the stock exhaust with just a little outlet pipe, the dealer installed an air intake but that is all for the motor mods, I did have an alarm put in after catching to many people in the car and at the same time had an HID kit installed other then the car being wrapped that's all that was done to it. It had just over 2500 miles on the odometer. The car was always garage kept and when I cleaned the outside I would also wipe down the motor.


    Polaris did contact me 2 days after the fire and I am working with them to get some resolution. I will say the head of Polaris engineering (slingshot division) is very concerned with this issue calling me at 9:30pm his time. I will try to keep the thread updated as long as the posters stay positive. There's no reason to hate, I believe everyone of you should be concerned with this issue. Thanks for listening to my story.