Fire Extinguisher Install

[BrownBadger]

Coming from the land of old VW's, I am used to always carrying a fire extinguisher within easy reach when I am driving. Plus, after some stories of fires around here I decided to try and find a good place to mount my little auto extinguisher that would be both easily accessible and a clean install. What I ended up with was mounting it below the glove box. No drilling required and still leaves plenty of room for your feet. Pretty self explanatory, but how-to is below with photos.

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Step 1: Remove glove box by removing two screws on bottom hinges. It should look like this when you are done.

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The extinguisher I have has optional velcro brackets, but if you remove them then it just has some holes down the center for mounting.

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Step 2: Attach extinguisher bracket to support rail under glove box. It already has holes which happened to line up perfectly with the ones in my bracket. I used some spare hardware I had laying around.

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Step 3: Reinstall glove box door by attaching two screws that were removed earlier.

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Plenty of foot room!

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View from outside.

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Now to find a black extinguisher.

[irowiki]

Just paint it!

[Petros]

I used to see these on hot rods, sand rails, dune buggies, hot VW bugs, and other street racers, always thought it looked cool when I was in high school (some 40 years ago). of course the old air cooled VWs had a tendency to have engine fires since an fuel leak is trapped in the engine compartments (unlike most other cars, including ours). In collage I would spend time in the engineering library, that had a big section on automotive engineering, and I ran across a DOT study on how owner modifications affected the safety of cars. very scary read, from cheap alloy wheels disintegrating at highway speeds, to internally mounted stereos or speakers, after market steering wheels, etc. severely injuring or killing passengers or drivers in minor collisions.

being that the smaller cars i always liked driving means that enough room to mount a "cool" fire extinguisher was limited, I considered how many times I have seen a car fire (very rare), and what my chances of ever actually needing it in an emergency vs. how many car accidents I have seen (quite a few). I decided to leave it out of my car. If I really needed one I could securely mount it way in the back, away from any passengers and so it will not come loose in a rollover or on a rough road (where it becomes a serious hazard, rather than a safety device). I once even had an engine fire that I put out with some old coveralls. there was no safety issues, I just wanted to limit the damage to the wire bundles and other plastic parts in the engine compartment (it was an over heated wire that shorted out and ignited the plastic wire insulation). Safety was not really a worry, everyone was safely out of the car in short order.

I would recommend you mount it solidly near the rear hatch, away from the passengers. In a bad accident, having it in that location under the glove box could break both your passengers legs. the few seconds of extra time to get it from the back, if you do ever actually need it, will never make a significant difference. But it will almost certainly cause injury in an accident where you have it now.

Just something to consider.

[ARCHINSTL]

The installation is clever, to be sure (and the write-up IS impressive!), but - what Petros wrote.
Tom M.

[BrownBadger]

Good points, which I never really thought about. At least, I didn't think having it there would be any worse than having something on the floor. t never have any passengers though, except for my son who rides in the back. Keeping it in this location it may be best to go with a more secure metal locking mount.