I just read an update and his burns are rated as severe second degree burns maybe edging into 3rd degree in some spots. He had a surgery to clean the burned tissue and apply some skin grafts. Those grafts will be replaced with a fresh grafts as the flesh below heals. He has had hyperbaric treatment with higher oxygen content air under pressure to promote healing.
Good thing he didn't inhale fire and damage his lungs.
I wish him well. I've managed to avoid being burned by gasoline, but have lost some hair a time or two.
I was doing some work in my garage late one evening on my 1974 Triumph Stag ,
She has had a conversion to run a Rover v8 instead of the original triumph engine.
The conversion was done by a previous owner and not by me !
Anyway I had the engine running and I could hear a kind of strange hissing sound from the engine bay
I opened the bonnet and for a while couldn’t find where the sound was coming from .
Triumph stags are known for overheating, so I was looking for a coolant leak.
After much poking about I spotted what was causing it.
The twin SU carburettors have a float bowl each and inside there is a needle valve which is supposed to stop the flow of fuel once the float bowl is full.
Then as an extra safety measure the SU’s have an overflow port at the top of the bowl which has a hose going out and down to the ground below the engine bay, just in case the needle valve gets stuck open any extra fuel is dumped away from any heat source or source of ignition etc etc.
The guy who installed my engine decided to cut those hoses just above where the 4 into 1 tubular exhaust manifolds joined into a collector.
The hissing sound was petrol dropping onto the exhaust and boiling off .
I quickly turned off the car and basically ran out of the garage .
Thankfully nothing happened, but it definitely gave me a fright as it could have ended very badly.
The very very next job was obviously to re route the hose’s and fit new floats and needle valves to my carburettors.
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