It was my understanding that the hood pad is for engine fires. Engine catches on fire, melts plastic grommets, pad falls on engine and "smothers" fire.
but then again maybe I dreamed it.
I really doubt that. For one thing, all or nearly all the grommets would have to melt. For another, in order for them to melt you'd have to have one heck of a fire going.
Even
if they melted, and the hood pad dropped, you're only looking at removing a small amount of space. There's a reason that the hood pad is shaped and has indentations in it, there's not that much room between the engine and hood as it is. What
might happen is the pad drops and removes enough oxygen from the fire that it goes from a raging inferno to a smolder, but as soon as you pop the hood open you'll expose that smolder to lots of oxygen, and the fire will start ripping again.
There's too much open area around/under/in front of/behind the engine anyway. Even if the hood pad dropped there's plenty of space for oxygen to make its way to the fire.
I believe the hood pad is for a couple reasons. One is that it is actually a sound dampener, without it a lot of engine noise can come through the hood and then through the windshield. Another is for heat protection. No pad wasn't a big deal when autos didn't use a clear coat, but now that they have a clear the heat can damage it quite easily. As we all know just the sun alone can damage it, for most folks you are talking maybe 120* F on a hot day (figuring 90*-100* ambient). The engine bay can easily reach 150* F, which would damage the clear much quicker than the sun alone.
Newer clears are
much better than old, but they are still affected by it.
There are some other reasons for it, helps weight the hood and reduce/prevent hood flutter that older vehicles could get. Tends to clean up the "look" when you have the hood open (important for a $50k luxury SUV). That sort of thing.
FWIW my pops is a firefighter of 30 years and has been on many a car fire, I've never heard of the hood pad having an affect on a car fire. From what I've heard, car fires tend to start low anyway, often oil/fuel dripping down onto something hot (often exhaust), or an electrical fire (wire rubbed through and shorting to ground, wiring overheating due to being undersized, etc). It's certainly possible that the pad acting as a fire suppressant is possible, but IMHO it's more likely to actually
aid a fire than suppress it. Think about what would happen to the pad if you left the oil cap off and headed down the freeway.....
