Mike Tobias, owner of Unique Fire Stop Products, was quoted in Fire: The Ultimate Heat Disaster, an article appearing in The Shop, a car magazine for performance, restyling and customization professionals. Mike, a long-time proponent of racing car fire safety is also the inventor of automotive firestop products designed to keep both the race car driver safe and to protect the interior of the vehicle in case of a fire.
Mike’s expertise in automotive firestop safety is noted in the article:
Mike Tobias, owner of UNIQUE Fire Stop Products in Robertsdale, Alabama points out that the steel bulkhead between the car’s engine bay and the passenger compartment — the so-called firewall– is actually fairly porous to fire. That’s hardly surprising when one considers all the holes drilled through it for everything from the steering column to the heater hoses to the wiring harness. “All of those wires, cables and hoses will be the first to give way in a fire, ” Tobias warns, as the OE plastic and rubber weather seals around them melt, contributing their own toxins to the mix already entering the passenger compartment.
Unique Fire Stop offers a variety of products that actually seal off openings when exposed to extreme heat. Wires and hoses can be routed through the Fire Stop, an aluminum sleeve containing intumescent putty; when the putty is exposed to extreme heat, it expands to 8 to 12 times its original size, effectively sealing off the sleeve.
For moving linkages, the company makes a sponge-like plug that won’t interfere with motion but will also expand when exposed to fire. And for filling miscellaneous cracks and seams, it offers Expanding Firestop Foam that, unlike silicone foam or building supply insulators, will not burn and/or produce toxic gas.
“And all our products are accepted for use at NASCAR, IMCA and SCAA,” Tobias adds.
Read the entire article in the February 2016 issue (use the navigation tool to jump to pages 31-32).
