SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20131124-20DA7-2147449636. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Matched catalog product: Cub Cadet LTX1045 - I3WX91AT056. Source model text: 13WX91AT056. Incident: I was on my cub cadet LTX1045 tractor mowing my lawn. About 10 minutes into the mow, I stopped to empty out my bagger. Upon returning to the tractor, I saw a fire under the hood of the tractor through the louvers. I opened up the hood and found the front portion of the engine on fire. I quickly ran to the house to get the garden hose. The size of the fire had increased in the minute it took to get the the hose over to the tractor. The fire was burning very close to plastic gas tank. I sprayed the hose on the fire for about 2- 3 minutes before I was able to extinguish the flames. All of the plastic component on the engine were in full flame and melting. The hood portion started to melt. all the electrical wires melted and bare metal was exposed. I was lucky that I had stopped to empty the bagger in a location where I could reach with a garden hose. If I was any further away, the whole tractor would have been burned to the ground and gas tank may have exploded. The tractor was less then 6 month old an only had 24 hours on the engine.