The Crazy Reason why my Lamborghini Caught on Fire.

9-1-1, what is the city and address of your emergency? Hey, I'm next to the Cane 7 brew on 126 and Old Liberty Way. We got a car on fire. I have some help getting started, OK? What type of vehicle is it? Looks like a Lamborghini. My Lamborghini Gallardo caught on fire 13 days ago. I was helpless. I didn't have a fire extinguisher. And this car is really special to me. I bought this car 11 years ago at Lamborghini of Newport Beach, September 26, 2015. I've put over 40,000 miles on the car. Now, without the help of so many amazing bystanders in the state of Utah, the car would be gone. To each and every single one of you who came out of nowhere with fire extinguishers, and to the lady who called 9-1-1, I cannot thank you enough. So today we're going to find out what is insurance going to do with the car. Are they going to total it out? Is it a complete loss? Can I buy the car back? Can I fix the car? And also, what caused the fire? Well, the OG Gallardo has finally made it back here to home sweet home. And the best part is, she's still my car. So insurance determined the Gallardo was a total loss, which meant they actually paid out the full market value of the car, and then it went from a clean title to a salvaged title. That's the bummer part. The good part is, they actually allowed me to buy the car back directly from them. It didn't have to go to Copart or another auction website. They gave me a very nice buyback price. So the car is now mine, as is with a salvaged title. So we got to pull it off the trailer, we got to wash it, and then we got to fix it. And the first two are much easier than the latter, but let's get to work. Now the big question, of course, is going to be, how's the motor look? The fire was obviously on the driver's side intake. The motor might... It might be... I don't really know. Overall, I think I got pretty lucky. When the fire happened, I left the driver's side door open, and the door is totally fine. The interior, totally fine. Much easier to get this baby off the trailer than on the trailer. Now painter's tape should seal off the interior, and now we got to wash this baby. This is nasty. So the fire happened 13 days ago, so almost two weeks through the day. I wanted to clean this all off, but obviously for insurance reasons, I didn't feel like I should touch the car. This is going to be interesting. Obviously, none of this is salvageable, so it don't really matter. Well, this has been a long time in the making. ♪ Well, the first post-fire car wash from right here looks brand new off the showroom floor. From there, maybe not so much. So when the fire first happened, the first thing I did was open up the rear deck lid. When I towed the car down to fix autoproof for the insurance, I was on the highway, I closed the rear deck lid, unnoticed to me during the fire, it melted the cable. So right behind the driver's seat, there's a latch. There's a cable that runs to the rear deck lid. You pull the latch, the rear deck lid opens. That cable melted. When I closed the hatch, it locked it. And now the cable don't work. So I got to figure out how to open up the rear deck lid, remove the rear deck lid, because the engine bay, you can kind of see through the rear glass, is still a filthy mess. I can't wash it until we remove this. Whew. It's hot. And I feel like I weigh twice as much. I've been washing the car working on it. I feel like you're wet right here. You're sweaty. I'm hoping we can pop this baby off, and then get the rear deck lid open. And officially, the rebuild has begun. Well, I was able to access the cable, a little bit of tension, and it popped right on open. So we are off to a very good start. We got to clean this baby on up. One strut fully removed, and second strut fully removed. Heavy. Yeah. Well, 20 years ago, car parts were very, very heavy. Well, we officially add more parts to the living room graveyard that is upstairs. I feel like this pile gets bigger and bigger every single day. Yep, it just continues and continues. We got M4, A12, Rivalto, Aventador, Aventador Roadster, and now the Gallardo. We got parts in one of the spare bedrooms. We got parts in the basement, parts in the garage. Someday, I want to build like a parts storage room. Well, here's our first look with the wheel removed. We really got to pop off this fender liner. I'm going to borrow Sophia's glasses right here because there's a lot of nasty stuff up in here. The rear one got cooked like a little bit on the backside. Little melted up top. Not bad. There's some line on the radiator that is melted to the fender liner. The old saying is on the 4th of July, somebody's going to lose a finger, and I promise you, it's not going to be me. Not today, not this 4th of July. There's so much filth. Oh, jeez. Did you see all that? Oh, it's not good for the lungs. Cancer in a fender liner. Just like that. Okay. It's crazy to see without the fender liner because you can't really see all the junk. All in here. Oh, my goodness. What in the nature of the world? What is that? That's nasty. Whatever was leaking. Let me see. The viewers got to see that. Is that power steering fluid after it hardens up? Oh, it's a dead rat. What is that? We didn't get winter the entire year. Finally, the snow shovel is getting some use. I'm just going to assume this is a total loss. Is that a fair assumption? Nothing to save? I mean, this is just what? The wires from this? That entire intake line just completely incinerated. Yep. See you later. We're going to have to remove the back bumper and the side skirt. I think we're going to focus on the side skirt. I removed a bolt in there. It should be just a couple clips. Once again, I'm not too worried about the condition of this skirt because we're going to have to replace this. Oh, you can't even see that. That's nasty. To remove the side skirt, the door's got to be open all the way, and it only opens that much. So we got to actually put the wheel back on, roll the car outside to get this side skirt off. She cooked. She well, well done. That is disgusting. That's like a Florida swamp. That is nasty. That's virus-type nonsense. Yum, yum, yum for your tum, tum, tum. Look at that. That is too close. That is filth. That is the definition of grime right there. What does it smell like? Power steering? I think it's power steering. Oil? It's probably a mix of a lot of different things, right? And the fire extinguisher material. I think this is, obviously at the bottom of the car, this is a mix of everything. And there's also this undertray piece that we had to pull off. This pretty much sums up exactly what happened. A lot of power steering fluid, a lot of coolant, a little side of oil, and a lot of fire extinguisher material. Whoa. Before we put this baby back up on the bin pack, I want to remove all the engine trim, all the lighting snipers. Little melted right here come right on out. Obviously it goes without saying the fire started right here. But what caused it? Now that that piece is removed, we got a lot of lines. Like this one is disconnected. I think that's the EVAP system there. But this is very curious right here. But I feel like this might have been the instigator. I don't know what that is, but I think this, this might be the breaking point. I think we're going to slice and dice this out so we can actually get like a really good feel of what's behind this. This valve cover looks brand spanking new. So would the Voodoo Magic, the Dirt Devil 5000, not paint product placement. Well, the steamer is definitely the magic trick to get this engine bay clean. You can see all that charge is coming right off the paint. Also, I love the mask. The one strap. Perfect. There's no way any particles. Health first. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Now the engine is not like perfectly clean, but it's definitely a whole lot better. I could spend the rest of the day trying to get this thing pristine. We're going to start tearing apart this side of the car. First, we're going to start with the rear bumper and then kind of work our way this way. One turn at a time. With this grill piece removed, you can now access that bolt there. I'm going to have to give this a, oh, nevermind. It was easy. And this side should pop right on off. Well, slowly but surely, we are starting a new dumpster pile of first-gen Gallardo parts. We got super lucky with this rear bumper. You can see that corner right there that is slightly charred. Definitely repairable. If this thing would have burned just a little bit more, that would have cost us probably $4,000. So just this alone is a huge savings. Now next up is the rear taillight. One of the first things I want to start doing is compile a parts list because a lot of these parts on a 20-year-old car are not going to be super easy to find. This taillight, you can see the wiring harness right here. It's really dark, but this thing is cooked. It doesn't mean it won't work, but I guess let's find out. Now step one, ignition on, and then driver blinker. Driver blinker? Do we got anything? Anything? It's not a good start. How about passenger blinker? How are we looking? We good? That's not good. That's not good at all. Now this piece is totally... Oh, oh, oh. Where are we at? Where are we at? There we go. We'll add this to the good pile, but unfortunately, the taillight is not going to be going in the good pile. No siree bobby. I got to pull this thing out in the sunlight for you guys to fully see how cooked this piece is. You can see the wiring harness right there for the taillight. That is why she don't work no more. I'm not going to say total loss. Maybe the lens is good. Just a little bit of electrical repair. Probably not the biggest surprise ever, but working with electrical is not my forte? Is that specialty? It's not my specialty. Basically, I have no knowledge, but we're going to figure it out. I feel like it's safe to say the single hardest part of this rebuild is going to be all the electrical connections. This little canister thing, I have no idea what this is. I think it's part of the EVAP system maybe. I really need to get gloves, but I'm too excited and I don't want to go to the store. Whatever this thing is, fully removed. I feel like the tank itself is probably fairly cheap. I think we'll probably redo it. As previously noted, my biggest concern with all this is going to be the electrical because this line, which is very important, half of it is completely gone. One of the best parts about these videos is it is the best reference point when I have to put this baby back together. Right over here, you can see the ground for this wiring harness. 13 mil. I feel like a lot of this wiring harness will be totally fine, but you can see it is just peeling right on off like that. We're definitely going to have to re-protect this, but a lot of the lines look totally fine. It's really just this covering that is completely gone. It's just flaking off. I feel as though it's fairly safe to say that whatever this line is, probably not salvageable. Now, to show the audience how brittle this is, Sophie, I just want you to break it in half with your hands. Not there. Down the middle. Boom. I told you it was brittle. Isn't that crazy? I think that's an EVAP line. So, the garage floor is clean. Yeah. It's squeaky clean. Clean, yeah. And into the bin. Now, I do want to point out I'm wearing a Lamborghini Salt Lake hat. It's a nice hat. It fits my dome right. I don't work there. I'm not certified by Lamborghini. Eight millimeter right here. A little bit of force. There we go. Now, the oil should be actually fairly clean, I'm guessing. This thing was recently changed. Yeah, that oil is spanking clean right there. That's like brand new. The crazy thing is this car requires so much oil, all for naught. Well, there's actually two drain plugs on the Gallardo. I let that one drain out about 99%. We don't have to get everything out. And then right up in here, it's kind of hard to see, there's a second drain plug. Most Lamborghini shops will charge you probably like a thousand dollars to do an oil change. I reckon you can do it yourself. Now, having a lift makes it much easier. Still pretty easy. There shouldn't be too much oil in this. Still quite a bit. And it's clean as could be. So, naturally, I just have to sit here and wait because Lamborghini, whatever line this is, if I wasn't holding it back, it'd just get covered in oil. Well, the oil has been fully drained. And next up, we gotta flush out all the coolant. Now, one thing I'm very interested to find out is how much coolant comes out of the car because during the fire, there was a lot of fluids. We know for sure power steering, probably some fuel. Was there coolant though? There should be because that radiator's got a coolant line and that radiator went kaboom. How much we lost? Let's find out. So, we got two drain plugs here and here. Six millimeter. I think we're gonna try the top one first. Now, these ones I've heard can be a little sensitive. We do not want to strip anything. Come on. Perfect. You got your safety goggles on, guys? Get sunglasses and stuff. Put them on. Thank you, Sophie. Right on time. You see, we good. We are good as could be. Oh, that is so clear. What in the world? That's not very much though. Is that water, bro? That looks like water but that is basically no coolant at all. No, that's definitely coolant. Wow. It was supposed to be pouring out for like 60 seconds. We definitely lost a lot of coolant. So, the trick of the trade, when something like this happens and it gets stuck, all you do is you just drop it. Oh, no. That was just the washer. And just like that, we are back in business. That's a lot more. Maybe that's second water. Interesting. Sophie and I just had like a full conversation and we looked back and it is still pouring like Niagara Falls. Every time we remove a part, we get access to new areas that we can vacuum. It's very satisfying to be honest. All this area in the frame, all this extinguisher material, we're going to be cleaning this out basically the entirety of this project. This radiator, we're going to pull this out. You can see this plastic shroud that is just completely melted. It's actually melted to, well, actually, maybe, maybe, this might make my life a little bit easier. You look cute with the glasses. I'm adorable. What can I say? So we got this line right here and I'm guessing there's going to be a whole lot of coolant in it. So we're going to crack on real quick. Oh, we got nothing. Maybe, maybe. Oh, literally, dry as can be. All right. Sorry for the commotion. Didn't need the glasses. I'm getting you filming. This is 175 pounds. I think this one might be seized onto the radiator because this is kind of like ground zero for the fire. Come on. Just a man doing the thing. You know what I'm talking about? Did I get it though? That's crazy. We just, this whole mount, we just snapped it. That's what happened. No, you saw that? I didn't see that. Can they even see that? We just snapped the whole thing off. You can't get it though, Sophie, because otherwise I look like a dork. I'm wearing your glasses. You're out here in your socks. Oh, and you just hit your head, Sophie. No, you're not going to get it. Even if you get it, we're going to have to cut it out of the video. You realize that, right? So you're not even going to get credit. It'll be in the end credits. Oh, uh-huh. Uh-huh. You see? You're right. Uh-huh. Wrong. Yeah. No, keep talking. Keep talking. Just like that. Okay. I should get the glasses off first. You're so smart. I'm so dumb. No, no, no, no, no, no. Melted plastic shroud. It's just a thorn in my side. We just got to really be forceful and we're going to get this thing out. Come on. A slight change of plans to get the radiator out first. We got this whole unit right here that's kind of sort of hanging down. I don't know what this is. I probably should know what it is, but I haven't done the research to figure it out. We're going to try to pull this and this and that should give us access to that. We are going to snap this baby off. Come on. Oh, goodness. Hallelujah. And again, safe to say, trash. Everything on this car is just seized together We're going to try. That was a lot, but you know what? Maybe more is better, right? I'm going to let the WD-40 do its magic and we're going to pull these oil lines here. It's going to give us a bit more access. If I can't get that removed because it's seized, we're going to have to dig deeper and pull this whole coolant line. Sometimes things go really well and everything just pops right on off. The problem is none of these items are mounted anymore because all the mounting points failed. And so everything is just super loose and it's just hard to get tension. Also doesn't help that I'm filming with one hand, but regardless. Wow. There is really nothing over here. And once again, makes sense. This canister piece just comes right on off. Oh, that's air conditioning. I was completely wrong. I thought that was oil. It's the air conditioning. We completely lost all of it. Come on. Oh, gosh. We're using... No. So, I used WD-40. The veins are going crazy. This is why we should be working out. Right? Get it. Harder. I have tried and tried and tried and tried to remove this to no avail. So, the coolant line runs all the way over to this side and you can see where the wrench is. You can see the nut right there. We're just going to... Hopefully, this one. Perfect. Much easier. Oh. It's oil. Is that the wrong line? The whole time I was calling it a radiator, I think it's an oil cooler. That's why there's oil in it. my bad, but hey. It looks like a radiator. It's the same concept. It looks like it. It's to cool the oil. Yeah. Same concept. I got to wedge this line on it. Oh, geez. Okay, line is out. I was saying, we can clean this on off. We don't reuse it, right? Yeah. Hey, I'm an environmentalist. Obviously, this is completely gone. So, yes. This is an oil cooler. There's no coolant in it. Only oil. I wonder if we actually had to drain the coolant lines. I guess more to come? Well, now that the oil cooler has been fully removed, it's crazy the type of things that we are pulling out of this car. This... Yeah. Oh, geez. That's not good. You guys can't tell, but that is the wiring harness, and that thing is gone. Well, the next step is probably the most exciting step, but also maybe the most scary step. I don't want to cut too much. We're going to be very, very conservative. We're going to cut out the damaged panel. Now, we're not cutting it out to repair it. We're basically cutting it out for better access. The actual Body Shop Fix Auto, they'll actually repair it, so we're going to avoid the spot welds. We're going to do a very loose cut. You can see the blue painter's tape. Slice there, slice there, down and down, and this whole piece we should be able to take off. All the spot welds, you can see all this area, we're going to leave that part of the frame and those spot welds there, and then when Fix Auto gets the car, they can clean it up as need be. Those glasses are... What? They're special. Do I look special? You do. See, I want to do it super thin because I don't want to nick the frame. What? You can't do... It's your face. You have a crooked face. Do I have a crooked face? It's like this. Scoot, scoot. Get out. What is that? That's your mask? It's not slippery. When you realize we should wear masks, I grab this. It's actually an eye mask. Saskia grabs that. We got it. And that is one quarter panel cut out of a Lamborghini Gallardo. Never imagined 11 years ago when I bought this thing that we would be truly slicing and dicing. What do you think? We got it. This is a piece of art. Pretty cool, right? Where are we framing this? On the wall someday maybe? Not my best work but a little bit of pie cutting but we got it. Looks great. I got to be honest, angle grinding is not my favorite thing in the entirety of the world but I'm quite happy that we were able to get this thing off in pretty much one piece. Kind of a little bit of pie cutting here and there but overall, this is certainly in the trash bin but I think we're going to save it, put it on the wall maybe? Well, now that that panel is off, we really get a full look at what happened with this fire. I thought this wiring harness back here might be okay but the closer and closer and closer we get to the hottest point of the fire, this thing is fully, fully done for. Oh baby. I'm not going to say that I feel it over my head at this point but this project just got a whole lot more complicated. There's certain items like this that concern me because well, it's just the other end melted off and then you go down to a place like this and you just pick and pieces just start flying off. Oh, you got things like this as well. This thing, both ends got melted off. Well, first thing to remove is the EVAP canister here. We're getting so close to the root cause of this fire. I feel like we got a couple lines we got to disconnect first. Going to try to remove all the really easy pieces just to give us a little more access. And we have the bracket for the rear deck lid. The wiring harness is like melted onto this EVAP and it's crazy. Every time I touch it it's just crumbling into bits. So this EVAP canister here is actually melted into this metal bracket and so the only way we're going to be able to get this out is to unmelt it, I guess. As I smack this thing I can smell all the fumes from the fuel. Obviously that's kind of what the EVAP system is for. I think we're... Oh, we got it. Alright, well I was able to pry this thing out of this bracket and now somehow I had one EVAP canister fully removed. This thing completely got cooked. We are definitely going to have to replace this. Luckily I found one on eBay for like $95. And these three lines we're also going to have to get those sorted out but this is just the beginning of many issues. There's just so many different lines that are burnt on both ends. One of the most likely causes of this fire was the power steering line rupturing and dropping fluid on the exhaust headers. Well this is the power steering reservoir so I want to pull this off, take a look at it and then kind of inspect the lines from there and maybe we can figure out the root cause. The first step is to drain the power steering lines. If there's no power steering fluid I think we probably figured it out. If there's a lot of power steering fluid though maybe something else caused the fire. There's very, at least some fluid. That is not very much fluid. I don't even know if you guys saw the fluid coming out because there was such a little amount. You can see it dripping kind of right there but we've got another drain plug on this side. We're going to pull that too. We've got a couple crush washers. Okay that's still not very much fluid. Huh. Well that was very, very messy. Filming that was next to impossible but the power steering reservoir in all of its glory is finally out. Now the reservoir itself seems totally fine. We're definitely going to replace it because once again this part is not very expensive. It looks fine. So this black reservoir right here is the fuel tank and that's the fuel filter right there. A little bit difficult to see so yes right here. Now the fire started like right in this area. The fuel lines all look fine. The fuel filter looks fine as well but imagine this thing had burned for just like a little bit longer this thing would have been gone. This cross member here I'm going to try to remove this because the exhaust headers sit right below it. And maybe this piece will yep there we go. Smooth as butter baby. I just removed this line here. This is an evap line and if you look at this end you can see why I removed it. And that's because well wherever it went it's gone. And toss it in the bin. I think I've figured it out. What caused the fire on the Lamborghini I think I have figured it out. Initially I thought power steering mainly because everything I read online was like that's the most common cause of a fire. It's usually through the driver's side intake but the thing about this car as I've been pushing it around I've always had the power steering. So in the back of my mind I was like well yeah that's the most common cause the fire was in the right location but it doesn't appear that I've lost the power steering. And after inspecting all the power steering lines you can see this line right here it's braided this line these three braided lines there are no issues whatsoever. Now the power steering was a little bit low however I believe that is because of this unit here. So this is actually for the front end lift which actually shares the power steering fluid with the power steering lines and I think that the fluid came out right here. You can see this cap that completely melted off. I think that's what dumped the power steering fluid but I don't think it's what caused the fire. Now if it wasn't the power steering what was it? Well the fuel tank which sits right here looks totally fine. This fuel line this fuel line this is the fuel filter here this all looks good this line looks all good as well. Every single line coming from the fuel tank or the fuel filter has no issues. Now right before the car started on fire I did smell some fumes and I thought in my head that maybe it was another car in traffic around me. I was two minutes back to the house the guy would always run super rich I mean hindsight is 20-20 I should have pulled over but I definitely did smell fuel right before the car ignited and I think that is the key indicator especially the fact that we've maintained power steering through all of this it was related to those fumes. As I've been tearing apart this car I noticed one item that was a lot more charred than everything else AC? Not too bad power steering? Not too bad the front end lift? Not too bad we got the oil cooler? Not too bad but this item right here every single thing around it was overcooked like clearly the fire kind of started in this region and what is this? This is the EVAP canister and the EVAP canister sits right here. This is ground zero for the fire when I got out of the car the paint was bubbling right here the smoke was coming out right here. Clearly it started right around the EVAP canister and if we look at all the different items around it they are all cooked way more than any other item. Obviously this is all a hypothesis at this point I don't know if I'll ever know with 100% certainty but when you look at this break right here that doesn't look like it was burned it's actually not damaged that much but it does look like a proper failure location. What do you guys think? We got this piece which I believe is the other half of the purge valve we talked about this earlier that piece is gone. Definitely not going to need that. I realize this is Google AI so obviously take away the grain of salt but vapor leak on a hot surface. If an EVAP line charcoal canister or purge valve is cracked or disconnected highly flammable raw fuel vapors can escape into the engine bay these vapors drift onto a hot exhaust manifold catalytic converter or near an electrical short they can easily ignite. Now there certainly is a chance it's not the EVAP canister but as Google AI suggested a large amount of fuel vapors leak out the exhaust headers very hot day also it could have been an electrical fire that is for sure an electrical fire could have caused some sparks it doesn't really matter all I know for sure is that the fire started right by the EVAP canister that is for certain. Power steering is good fuel lines are good those aren't the causes so I think we've pretty much narrowed it down. Now next step is to order a bunch of parts we're going to need an assortment of body panels obviously that rear fender, side skirt that vented piece there we're going to need a new AC accumulator the EVAP system that I mentioned earlier the oil cooler power steering reservoir possibly a new tail light but I think what we really need is the driver side wiring harness and that's probably going to be the most difficult part of the entire project. This is the main engine wiring harness here on the driver side and you can see all through here this is going to be the nightmare on this project if you have any good ideas let me know in the comments below because yeah that's that's special. So the next step really is to find a donor car ideally one that maybe has passenger front end damage and this part of the car is totally fine I also could probably find the individual parts online the main reason I would want a donor car if I could find one with a low miles 5 liter engine at the same time that I'm doing this I could swap out the motor which would be kind of sort of two birds with one stone but like I said it's sort of a needle on a haystack a lot of copart a lot of facebook marketplace but I think we figured out the root cause of the fire the evap system especially the evap canister that's where the fire started all the symptoms point that direction power steering is fine fuel is fine and now if you've seen something that I have not seen while watching this video and you have another idea please suggest it in the comments below I'll be the first to admit I don't know everything this is the first car I've ever worked on that has caught fire the only thing I know for sure is the fire started right here the evap canister is right here so I think all signs point that direction anyways that concludes the first video in the rebuild process of the O.G. Lamborghini Gallardo and on that bombshell yep today's video is over Sophie don't laugh yes unfortunately it doesn't taste quite like chocolate milk I'm gonna toss this in the bin crikey yo what in the bin mate all the oil oh sorry looking like you were holding that with sunburst I'm beat I'm tired guys so we sit and we wait what's for dinner pizza I love striped pizza though need a striped pizza in Utah