Electrical Fire

I was driving my 72 MG Midget around Boulder the other day. It was getting dark so I naturally turned my headlights on. After about 3 minutes I felt a sharp piercing pain on my left leg. It was molten hot insulation dripping on my knee from behind dash board. Smoke and fire ensued and I immediately went for the emergency checklist. Right, it's not an airplane stupid- no checklist. The second option was the fire extinguisher mounted between the seats, but occurred to me that it would make quite a mess inside the car and the thought of inhaling halon at 45mph wasn't very appealing. I could take the burning insulation a little longer, it wasn't so bad once you got used to it! The only change I'd made since before the fire was turning the lights on so I killed the lights, put the fire out with my hand (ouch), and finally pulled over. British cars have Lucas electrical components which are notoriously unreliable. They should label their switches OFF, DIM, FLICKER, FIRE ! I remember an incident in UT when I was intentionally staying behind a cop because my tags were expired and my headlights started rapidly flickering on and off. So much for keeping a low profile. After I got the fire out I finished my errands in the darkness. Many a pedestrian yelled at me that my lights were off to which my kurt response was , "I'm aware of that!"

The MG with a reliable means of transport on the boot - just in case!