The *******es at the shop that did the upgrade on my -12 to an O-320 engine, along with replacing the generator with an alternator, installed a master solenoid that they picked up off the hangar floor.
After 10 hrs of engine break-in, I was merrily flying over the mountains east of Ogden on my way to a fly-in, when I started smelling smoke. Hoping the smoke was outside, I opened the window to sniff. The open window drew the smoke forward from the battery box area & filled the cockpit, practically suffocating me. If I’d have had a parachute, the -12 would have been on its own.
Not knowing exactly where the smoke was coming from and trying not to panic, I dove toward the ground as fast as possible, which was the only thing I could remember from pilot training about putting out fires. I spotted a dirt road & a field next to each other and opted for the road at the last minute, since there were a bunch of rocks on the field. It turned out that the road was very short and curvy, but I got landed and stopped without hitting anything. There I was, in the middle of nowhere, with no cell phone signal, on top of a mountain at 8,500 msl, after a fire in the cockpit.
I jumped out of that plane and ran like as if I was being chased by a bear. When I turned around after my escape, I expected the plane to be engulfed in flames, but no, it just sat there. I got brave enough to tiptoe over and open the cowling, expecting to see a charred new engine, but no, the engine was still shiny new.
In the meantime, a friend who had also been flying along to the fly-in in his supercub, landed (in the field, past all the rocks) to see what the delay was all about. I’ll spare all the details, but suffice it to say that by the time we both took off, a Bobcat and a D6 loader both ended up stuck in a mud hole in the process of dragging my -12 over to the field, since the curvy dirt road was too short for takeoff. Had to hand prop the -12, since there was no electrical.
After getting back to the shop that did the work, it was discovered that the (intermittent duty) master solenoid had been fried, burnt the positive cable to the battery, melted the battery, burnt the wooden spacer block above the battery in the battery box, and charred the fuselage stringer in that area. I was lucky.
