The likelihood of a burning cigarette being carelessly tossed out by a smoker and somehow finding itself in a nearby car’s air filter housing is about as remote as a Viagra pill falling from a window and finding its way into the fuel tank of a car.
Rod… yes, but consider how many hundreds of millions (more likely billions) of lit cigs that are tossed out of cars every year, then the odds of only one landing in an air intake are not zero.
For example, if you took off the gas cap of all the cars below, and dumped a million pills out of the window, there could easily be one in a gas tank.
I found a statistic that 300-500 billion cigs are consumed every year in the US. If 1% of those are in autos, and 10% of those are thrown out of the window, that is 300-500 million lit cigs flying through the air on our highways.
Sorry Bill. I just don’t buy it. It certainly would be an easy answer to deflect a problem with the car though so I can see why a manufacturer would come up with it. And I don’t know where you live but around here it is a rare event to see one tossed out the window.
Bing: Seeing a lit cigarette tossed out the window here is almost non-existent. The $500 minimum fine may have something to do with it.
The intake for the air filter is not a gaping hole. If someone stood directly in front of any stock automobile and made repeated determined efforts to throw a cigarette butt into the air intake the chance for success would be infinitisimally small.
Rod, but driving down the highway, there is a lot of air flow into the intake. So if a cig came near it, the air flow would suck it in.
But that is just opinion…
I drive 6 miles to work, and I’ll bet not a day goes by that I don’t see a cigarette tossed out a window or laying on the ground. I don’t throw them out of my car but I am guilty of tossing them onto the grass at my own home. Next time it rains or I mow the lawn they’re gone.
But with as many cigs I see tossed out of cars it’s not beyond the realm of possibility for me that one would find its way into an air intake.
I could maybe see that if there were leaves, and sticks, and turkey feathers, and old unlit butts in the housing but I’ve never seen that when I’ve changed filters. A little bit of grit and debris but that’s it. I’d think there would be a dead butt or gum wrapper or something in there. Plus either the butt would have to bounce once it hit the ground or you’d have to be directly in the air stream before it hit the ground. I’m just having trouble envisioning that happening. Not saying it couldn’t but I’d be looking for some other cause for the combustion like maybe the plastic came from China and was combustible and not to spec or something.
What did I say? Just ran out to get some lunch, pulled up next to a nice 56 Chevy Bel Air at a light. Guy took the last drag off his cigarette and tossed it out the window…
I have tried to recall all the various snouts and snorkels feeding the air filter housing on late model cars I have encountered and none seem to have had an inlet that is open directly to the grill although several had a scoop that curved over the radiator and pointed downward. If a cigarette or some other light object were to be tossed directly ahead of that scoop while the car was being driven at a high enough speed to produce a significant vacuum the object could be drawn in but once in the filter housing it would rest on the bottom due to the lack of sufficient vacuum accross the area of the filter box to lift the object into the filter. And like @Bing mentioned how often does anyone find anything in the filter housing unless mice have mad a nest there? No dnadelions. No Mimosa buds. No bees. All the things that would normally be expected to be drifting in the air and easily sucked in to an intake aren’t being scooped out each month when they plug up the air filter.
The air filter on the Sienna is vertical. There is no screen on the air cleaner opening.
Oh, I don’t know, we regularly find dragonflies, fir tree needles, leaves, scraps of paper or plastic wrappers, and the like in air cleaner boxes. Not necessarily brought there by rodents. It’s a one in a million shot, but I think it’s possible.
It is likely a lot rarer than one in a million, but not impossible.ive found leaf debris and other detritus in my Honda Accord air cleaner box.
With a system like the one Nevada posted it is certainly possible for a cigarette to enter and the odds would likely be somewhat better than the odds at Publishers Clearing House but I wouldn’t think much of a factory rep who off handedly blamed an under hood fire on such a one in a 10 to the x power possibility. I wonder if any inspection was made of the evap system before blaming the fire on a stray cigarette.
That reminds me, I need to change my filter. I’ve had it sitting there for several months but too lazy.
Many years ago a lady dropped off her car to have the headlight switch replaced because neither headlight worked bright or dim. The car actually needed both sealed beams and I billed her for testing the switch and replacing the bulbs. A few weeks later I was contacted by a lawyer who was representing the lady who demanded that I pay her for her car tha burned up due to testing her switch. My insurance company wanted to offer her $2,000 to shut up and go home but I demanded that an adjuster look into the situation since I was certain that I hadn’t caused the fire. The adjuster stopped by to tell me there wouldn’t be a suit but I had grounds to press charges against her and her family. The lady worked for the company that had my $million garage keepers liability policy and her car was at a shop belonging to one of her in-laws with the blanket of insulation behind the engine burned out taking the AC housing and a great deal of other plastic with it in a somewhat apparent case of arson. The adjuster was quite familiar with automobiles and had pictures of the high fan relay which has its battery feed through an unswitched fusible link and the relay was mounted through the insulation mat which had been oil soaked and ignited, likely intentionally, by jamming the points together on the relay.
All that to make a point that oil from the crankcase ventilation system and gasoline fumes from the evap system can accumulate in the filter housing on cars and become a fire hazard. Of course that wouldn’t be expected on a late model without a CEL history.
I know this is closed, but could the “hot wire maf” have caused this?
Gasoline fumes passing through a hot wire MAF might be ignited. The hot wire can become ‘red hot.’
I changed my air filter today after 21K and there was nothing in there except some grains of sand. Not even a moth. Doesn’t mean anything, just sayin’ what was there.
Hi,
This thread is two years old but the same thing happened to my daughters 2013 Sienna a couple of days ago. Car stalls, all lights go ON air filter fire, the cigarette butt theory y the dealer etc. She could have written exactly the original post or that of @RosieSmitty96. So, three identical cases with the Sienna air filter fire in this thread. A google search did not uncovered any such incidents in other brands or models. Could the air inlet in the Sienna’s be that much different to attract lit cigarette butts? Hard to believe. I would appreciate if the OP (@Arlo89) or @RosieSmitty96 would tell me if the insurance covered the repair cost, thanks.