Boy howdy, not what I was expecting to find in here. Tempted to toss this one and start again.
So…
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drive unit has a “silly hat”…a shiny hub cover that doesn’t do much except make it look like all is well when you do your due diligence and peak under the rotor on your brand new machine. Don’t be deceived…
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bottom of basket it swollen!!! and was full of liquid.
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swollen basket interacted with “silly hat”. Sparks and eventually fire ensued.
So why is the basket swollen?
First guess was “shaped charge!!”, but then you’ve got a chicken/egg problem…you need swelling to cause ignition, you need ignition to cause swelling…
That theory might be made to work if one assumes a series of shaped charges. an initial imbalance causing a detonation that then makes the next imbalance interaction more likely…
However, after trying to beat one back into some semblance of “fits in the machine”, I’m inclined to support an alternative hypotheses: that the primary cause for the swelling is the same that domes my bags…there was solvent INSIDE the rotor, and it quite literally domed the bottom of the rotor JUST like the bag seen here.
Here is another example of what one might find under the basket…
More honest than the silly hat. Probably more effective too…