Engine Compartment Fire on a Rental Compact Track Loader, East Texas (2023)

In 2023 the manufacturer of a compact track loader asked us to examine one of its machines that had burned while in a rental fleet in East Texas. We do not identify the manufacturer or the rental company.

A fire with no history

We examined the loader where it stood in the rental lot. No background came with it: not the date, time or place of the fire, how long the machine had run, its maintenance records, whether the operator noticed a loss of power or an unusual sound or smell, or how the fire was put out.

What the machine showed

The fire was in the engine compartment and had spread through the rear window into the operator cab. The battery on the right side of the compartment was badly burned and the insulation on both battery cables was gone, but there was no arcing or welding on them. The fuel injectors were in good condition, with tight connections and no sign of leaking. The exhaust was intact, though heat damaged. Of the two fuel tanks, the left one survived with heat damage and the right one was consumed. We tried to download data from the engine control module, but heat had damaged it too badly.

What could be said

The area of origin was the engine compartment. Fuel from the right tank most likely drove the severe damage there, and that damage erased the point of origin. We saw no sign of a mechanical or electrical failure, but with no background neither could be ruled out, and neither could human involvement. The cause was reported as undetermined. Run hours, maintenance records and an operator account would have let us test more hypotheses. Fires on construction equipment fall under our industrial fire investigation services.