Fire Bottle Placement

Installing a AFFF system in a Z3, and placing the bottle is a bit of a trick. If I try to put it in the passenger footwell, I'm worried it could be accidentally triggered by a foot hitting the pull cable. I'd prefer not to have to route lines from the trunk to the engine bay. I'm considering bolting a T6 plate to the wall behind the seats and mounting it horizontally behind the seats, with the nozzle end slightly elevated. However, I've heard that bottles should be placed with the nozzle end facing the front of the car.

I've found some conflicting info - such as placing the nozzle end of the bottle towards the front may reduce output pressure under breaking (not sure I'd activate while hard breaking though), and a diagram I've seen shows that a horizontal mount is preferred.

If I mount it across the back, there are already 6 ideally located bolt holes I can use to mount my aluminum plate. If the bolt holes were closer I could probably eliminate the plate but they're 20" apart. This mounting position also puts the nozzle and pull cable end facing the side next to my seat, and my external pull cable is really easy to install off the roll bar - it'd be a foot or so away. I can then run my own pull cable to the tranny tunnel right off the right of my seat, for easy reach.

This also allows all of the lines to run easily down the tranny tunnel into the engine bay, so they won't be impacted by a side/rear collision.

Seems ideal if the sideways bottle configuration is feasible - appreciate any thoughts. I'll be calling a few installers tomorrow to confirm and will post what I find either way.

The system I'm using is a firecharger with pressurized cartridge if that helps.

SCCA GCR doesn't specify placement other than securely mounted. Presumably they should work in any orientation since you don't know how a car could wind up in a crash. Haven't heard complaints on horizontal placement, but did hear about some zealous VARA tech folk take issue on front placement of the output preferring rear pointing vs front pointing.

I'd mount it on the floor in the passenger footwell for weight distribution reasons. Mount it horizontally with the discharge towards the center of the car. Roll it so that the cable and cartridge are towards the front of the car and the bottle blocks them from passengers feet. If that doesn't seem to provide enough protection then fab up a simple shield to cover the trigger assembly.

I'm thinking of placing the bottle horizontally behind the seats but centered with the tunnel. If you look at this stripped down interior pic, you can see a triangle of bolts just on each side of the back panel that would be sitting right behind the seats. There's ample room there for both maintenance and the bolt holes were used for mounting the original roll hoops, so they're sturdy. I'd likely bolt a T6 Aluminum plate to those 6 bolt holes, and then mount the bottom to the plate to simplify the install.

Stripped Interior

APEowner wrote: I'd mount it on the floor in the passenger footwell for weight distribution reasons. Mount it horizontally with the discharge towards the center of the car. Roll it so that the cable and cartridge are towards the front of the car and the bottle blocks them from passengers feet. If that doesn't seem to provide enough protection then fab up a simple shield to cover the trigger assembly.

I'd probably do this if the footwell of the passenger area wasn't so small. I may still go that route but it would require that I modify my footwell panels I fabricated already (should have planned better).

dcteague wrote: I'm thinking of placing the bottle horizontally behind the seats but centered with the tunnel. If you look at this stripped down interior pic, you can see a triangle of bolts just on each side of the back panel that would be sitting right behind the seats. There's ample room there for both maintenance and the bolt holes were used for mounting the original roll hoops, so they're sturdy. I'd likely bolt a T6 Aluminum plate to those 6 bolt holes, and then mount the bottom to the plate to simplify the install. Stripped Interior

That would be a nice clean installation. I don't care for adding weight that high but pretty much everything in engineering is a compromise.