Follow up for Air filter caught on fire

[Behdad <bbehnam@erols.com>]

First, thanks all for your input and insight.

To answer some of the questions which were asked:

1.  The air filter is a standard paper filter. Everything on this car is
stock.
2.  Prior to the fire, the airbox had no holes and was properly
connected to the intake hose.
3.  No major oil leaks.
4.  Just had a tune-up last week and I'm assuming that's when the filter
was replaced.  If not the filter is (sorry - was) about 6 months old.

Per everyone's suggestion, I took the car in this morning to have my
mechanic look it over.  

So far I've come up with only two explanations for the fire 1) that
something hot like a lit cigarette or a piece of hot metal off the
engine was sucked into the intake and that's what caused the fire; or 2)
the fuel distributor leaked fuel down into the air filter housing.  But
even a fuel leak would need something to ignite it.  At this point, I
know I have to replace the entire air filter housing.

As soon as I have a prognosis, I'll pass it along.

Behdad
Slightly Toastes '88 16V


Original post follows for those who missed it:

As I was driving today, my '88 16V started puttering and then stalled. 
When I popped the hood, I could see smoke and smell plastic burning. 
After getting it home and disassembling the air filter assembly, I found
the air filter had pretty much burned up, the plastic housing is all
melted inside and some of the hoses have also melted.  The engine still
turns over and runs briefly before stalling out.

Does anyone know how and why this happened and other than having to
replace the filter (which seems to be the only thing signficantly
damaged) is there anything else that should definately be replaced.  My
other concern is how much damage I may have done to the engine since
there was no air filter on my 20 minute drive home and there was
difinately alot of debris still in the housing when I took it apart. 
God knows what got sucked up into the engine.

My knowledge in this are is very limited, so any help would be
appreciated.  Especially since I have to drive to work on Monday.

Thanks in advance.
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