As I made a turn into a parking space, I heard a pop, felt a tug at the steering wheel, and immediately figured out what had happened. A lot of white smoke poured out from under the engine compartment, so I turned off the car and opened the hood to anticipate the expected oily mess and a broken power steering hose. Instead, I was greeted by a huge inferno that was consuming the entire driver's side of the engine compartment. I ran to the trunk, pulled out my little red bottle, and in a matter of seconds I put out the blaze. It took me a while to figure out where the leak happened, because the hose was intact from a bird's eye view. The hole was about the size of a pencil tip, and it was pointing right at the exhaust manifold.

Imagine highly pressurized Dexron shooting out like an atomizer from the hose, and hitting a hot exhaust manifold. The stuff was literally igniting, and worse yet, splattering all over the place like some kind of a primitive flame thrower. The heat was so intense, that the wire harness was damaged in some places. The intense heat also damaged my vintage style tar top battery, the ignition cables on the driver's side, the harness at the bulkhead, battery cables, and the hood insulation pad. Now here is the most important piece of perspective about all of this. The fire only lasted about 15 or 20 seconds, from the time I opened the hood, until I put it completely out. It is really hard to believe the damage such a seemingly brief flame can generate.

I placed a claim on my car a few days after the fire happened. Mostly because I started to see how the costs of replacements were piling up. So I provided a list of all the things I needed - prices, pictures, etc. I gave that to the friendly adjuster who came to see the damage, and within a week or so, I had a check to cover my expenses. That was the biggest relief in this whole ordeal. Here is the most interesting thing I learned from the insurance adjuster. On a fire, the item that caused the fire is not covered, but everything damaged as a result is covered. Thank goodness for that. I can live with $60 for a power steering hose set.

This is the part of the article where I am going to take the liberty of dropping names. There is nothing more discouraging than having your prized car which you have invested so much time and resources into, become a garage queen over night. And I know that I am preaching to the choir here when I mention the fact that parts for our cars are hard to find period. So I did the usual searches on Hemming's, our web site (of course), and also searching around on the internet. My first three people on the calling list were Lowell Howe, Kenyon Wills, and Andy Bernbaum, precisely in that order.

Kenyon is a very savvy wrench in case few of you have noticed, and he has a lot of Imperial time under his hat on that matter. He gave me some good tips, as well as a reality check on the fact that any harness I find from a bone yard will have a lot more damage to it than it's worth. Lowell Howe found the best one in his yard and sold it to me for a very reasonable price. Indeed Kenyon was correct. The connectors on it had the consistency of chalk, and there were some damaged spots on the harness, possibly from a similar fateful fire. This is no fault of Lowell's, he is a kind and honest man. Regardless, the harness he provided me was in better shape than the mess I had under my hood. So at least I had a template to work from.

The one vendor that has had me a bit perplexed lately is Andy Bernbaum. I have called on him three times in the past two years for different odds and ends (rubber pieces, ignition parts, etc), and he comes up empty handed every time. A short five years ago, he was practically a one stop shop; this had me wondering what to do for my battery cables and such. So I started perusing the pages of Hemming's until it dawned on me to try eBay for kicks.

To any car nut, eBay is a favorite place to look for Imperial-abilia, models, and occasional spare parts, like door handles and such. So it is a logical place to try looking for NOS or any parts. As it turned out, this was the best surprise. These eBay stores are incredible places, and there are two that I am going to mention, because they helped put my car back on the road. The first one is called Atlas Obsolete Chrysler Parts. Mark is the owner, and he has all kinds of incredible stuff there for our Imperials. It was through Atlas that I got the Ignition cables (sure you can get them anywhere else, but his are cut to size for B and RB blocks (numbered), and they are correct in texture and color also), battery cables, power steering hoses, etc. The stuff looks like OEM parts, and it is shipped promptly. Most important to me is Atlas' attention to detail - for example, if you order his power steering hose kit for our era cars, you get the two hoses, correct ring type hose clamps, and here is the kicker - a decal that is supposed to go somewhere on the power steering pump. You don't have the correct tool to install those ring clamps? They have that too. I've been wanting to update my engine compartment to the correct style hose clamps for a long time, but could never find them. Atlas provided me with an entire kit and the tool. Now my Imperial is just a tad closer to 1962 correctness.

The second place was more for a cosmetic (but crucial) piece - the hood insulation. The store is called Ballek's Parts. Mr. Ballek makes die cut pads for many years and models. Best of all, he also makes the glove box liners. So I had to snag one of each for mine. The quality of the materials and the workmanship are top notch. The hood pad fits like a glove (so does the glove box liner!), and all you have to worry about (with the hood insulation) is wearing gloves and long sleeves so that you don't get itchy arms...

It was by good luck that I discovered YNZ's Yesterday's Auto Parts. I was looking at their ad in Hemmings, and following up some searches on the internet. They are specialists on wire harnesses for cars going back to the McKinley administration. A good friend of mine from a local Model A club recommended them to me also. After asking Brian Tarbet questions and sending him some pictures of my mess, I felt very confident in their abilities. As it turns out, YNZ has never made a 61-63 Imperial harness. Don't worry about that anymore, fellow owners of bug eyed Imperials - My OEM harness is now in their library as a donor template. It is what they used for making mine. Their work is impeccable, and within a six week period I received my new harness. Every lug is crimped and then soldered, every connector is high quality, and they duplicate every wrap, pig tail, etc. All of this attention to detail made the harness fit perfectly in every nook and cranny. Every pig tail was the correct length, and every wire color matches the OEM print. They provide you with a nice instruction sheet that has a legend for all of the connections, and it matches little numbered flags that they put on every end of the harness. I had taken several pictures of my connection points for reference too. As a side note, YNZ's makes all kinds of harnesses, not just the engine compartment one, but the interior and any other portion of any car.

Click on the image above for a larger view. I removed the harness and laid it out on the driveway as a reference showing where it goes under the hood.	The instructions come with a legend and a wiring diagram.

If anyone out there has paid big money for one of those fine tar top reproductions, you can understand how discouraged I felt when I had to prematurely dispose of mine. It was just dumb luck that the fire didn't deform mine to the point of leaking out the good stuff; that would have just added insult to injury. This time around I pondered the battery question, and decided to go with an Optima battery for a little bit less money than a reproduction one. The one thing that has me sold on these batteries is their solid construction, and their incredible ability to maintain their charge when they sit around. There is one problem with these batteries though, and that is their very unconventional appearance. I mean, here I am, trying to make my engine compartment look like it once did 47 years ago, and I am putting something in there that looks as if I had stolen it form the spaceship Enterprise. So I did some research on the web, and found something interesting. Eckler Corvette sells a tar top kit that dresses up these batteries. Once I saw that, I was on a mission to update my battery. The kit consists of two parts; the battery top cover which is a vacuum formed piece with painted yellow caps that say "Delco" on them. The second piece is a die cut sheet of ABS that you bend to cover three sides of the battery. That was a bit of a disappointment, until I realized that I was getting a battery kit for a Corvette. If there are any Vette fans out there, you know that the Sting Rays had the battery located down low on the frame tucked away in a box, so all you see is just three sides of it. Well, that wasn't such a big deal, I got some black polycarbonate and made a nice little box to cover all four sides. It looks pretty good.

So there you have it folks, this little incident has provided me with plenty of things to share with all of you, and has given me a bit more hope about the ability to find reproduction parts for our beloved Imperials. I hope all of you take a little something out of reading this, and please put an extinguisher in your car(s)!