Mike Hood-Douda

Kim & Mike Hood-Douda Raindance Farm raindance_at_proaxis.com Lacomb, Oregon

Yesterday, I installed a fire extinguisher under the driver's seat of my '93 318i using a mounting kit that BMW sells in Germany. What follow is a description of what I did for those who might like to do the same. I have tried to arrange it in order of increasing and more mundane detail. Just break off reading when things get tedious.

BMW sells both 1.0 kg and 1.3 kg powder fire extinguishers as a standard after market accessory, along with kits to install them under the front front driver seats of an E36 3er. I opted for a 1.0 kg unit and bought the mounting kit for my standard, manually-adjustable cloth seats. The part numbers and prices are as follows:

   72 60 1 921 385  1 kg Powder Fire Extinguisher  97.00 DM
   72 60 9 400 643  Mounting kit for electric
                     and sports seats (E36)        35.51 DM
   72 60 9 413 436  Mounting parts for manual
                     seat (E36)                    35.51 DM

BMW's 1 kg fire extinguisher appears to be a repackaged "Gloria P1G" which can be had throughout Germany for 59.95 DM. I decide I could live without a roundel, bought the Gloria unit and found it fit perfectly, right down to the mounting holes.

The BMW mounting kit includes instructions in eight different languages explaining how to mount an extinguisher and fight fires. Installation time was supposed to take about one hour. I used 50 minutes, including a five minute break to hunt for a tool. (I saved time by not removing a seat belt.)

To mount a fire extinguisher, you need to remove the front seat to get at its front underside. To do that, first slide the seat all the way back, and if you can adjust the seat's height, move it to its highest possible position. Pop off the plastic cups covering the bolts holding the front of the seat mounting rails to the floor. Unscrew and remove the 17 mm hexagon nuts and their washers. Then slide the seat all the way forward and remove the two 17 mm bolts holding down the back of the rails to the floor. When you reinstall the seat, you should torque the nuts and bolts to 45 Nm.

You are now supposed to remove the seat belt from the seat using a Torx wrench. I didn't bother. As the seat is now loose, you can tip it back far enough to get at the front underside and install the extinguisher.

If you look along the seat pan just under the front of the seat, you will see a round hole-square hole pair and then, about 6 inches/15 cm away, another square hole-round hole pair. These accept a pair of sheet-metal nuts (speed nuts/Blechmuttern). If you now look along the underside a little ways toward the back of the seat you will spot two coil springs hooked to a cross member, and a hole drilled in the cross member between the springs. This is the third mounting hole for the fire extinguisher mounting plate that is part of the mounting kit. The hole has just enough room around it to insert a machine screw, and attach a nut - just barely, if you have an 8 mm ring wrench - a 1/4" socket wrench won't fit.

In typical BMW fashion, the mounting plate is a 2 mm thick, 500 g/1 pound steel plate that is not going to flex under the hardest deceleration. It is bent to give an obtuse corner matching the curve of the fire extinguisher. On the interior side, it has two tapped holes to attach the extinguisher. On the exterior side, it has two ears forward which reach to the sheet metal nuts and another back that reaches the screw you insert into the cross member between the coil springs.

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