Nearly Burnt New House Down.... My Funny Volvo Story (not so much then)

[turbo2007]

Hi all.
Stuck dog-sitting, tad bit bored, read some threads, made a post about an easy fix, read a few more threads, and I thought to myself "this is kinda fun", I'm old school and I rarely post anything anywhere unless its a place like this when I have a car question that I can't find the answer to, but what the heck, I felt like writing some more.

So here's my funny(?) Volvo story.

The year was 1992 lol.
The wifey and I had just built our first new house, complete with my 2.5 car attached garage. She designed the house, but I made it clear from the get-go a slightly oversized garage for me to tinker was a must.

At the time, she was driving an 88 Volvo Sedan that I had bought used with low miles. We'd had it for about 2 years I think. I forget which model, 740 maybe? It was a 4 door. I had a Cherokee that I loved, the Sport with the 4.0L; good truck.

Well her Volvo started blowing black smoke like all get out, wouldn't run right, fouled the plugs, it was ugly. She was off work for a 3 day stretch, but she needed this car as she was one of the head nurses that ran the ER at a decent sized trauma center hospital, and she had to be available at a moments notice.

Well I tried everything trouble-shooting this car. I didn't know much at the time, and it was basically long before the luxury of forums and YouTube videos. I don't recall all the various parts I bought, I know one was an air-mass sensor because it a cost a fortune and I couldn't take it back, but there were a few more i tried, all to no avail. Basically troubleshooting by replacing parts. I was at my wits end and she needed the car in one more day.

Again, this sounds stupid, but I guess I was stupid mechanically back then, so I went out and bought a new fuel pump because I was running out of things to replace. It was an external cylindrical kind, mounted underneath, near where the driver's seat is.
Well I got it out and was ready to install the new one and had a bright idea, why not test it instead of installing the new one. (yeah I know,,, check fp at the rail shrader-valve... but i had never worked on fuel injection! i didn't know!)

So I take the fuel pump, put it in the vice at the end of my 12 foot workbench, grab my battery charger, and apply 12V, whiiizzzzzz, it worked, spraying the fuel it still had in it across the top of my workbench and up the wall it resided against.

It was at least 1AM and I was grouchy, more-so now because I basically eliminated one more thing and the car still wasn't fixed. In frustration I tossed the charger cables aside and you guessed it, they hit each other and sparked.
Boom!
The entire bench and walls were engulfed in flames. It was bad.

I had just washed my Cherokee that day, and luckily there was a pile of wet towels on the floor. I threw them on the workbench as boxes on the shelves above were starting to burn. It gave me just enough time to run into the kitchen closet to get a big old-school fire extinguisher that someone had given me years before. Thank god it worked, because it was ugly in there.

I got the fire out. Garage was filled with that yellow powder from the extinguisher, but all in all no real damage. Lesson learned.
To this day, we always have fire extinguishers in the house. Ya just never know.

Anyway, you guys probably already diagnosed the car. Fuel pressure regulator.
I learned a lot. And to say my introduction to fuel injection was baptism by fire.... yeah, it really was.

Anyway, see ya'll later. Thanks for the opportunity to write a little. Fun!