N54US -J model is one that was around forever - god awful choclate brown paint scheme, new owners changed the registration
I'll be darned, that very well could have been the J model I flew, didn't have that "N" number, but it sure had a god ugly chocolate brown paint job and it was around Oklahoma a long time.
The cabin fire I had was caused by the cigar lighters resistors mounted on the aft side of the baggage compartment bulkhead. The first sign I had that we had a problem is when one of the passengers came up and said that the cigar lighter was real hot. As I was looking for a CB to pull to kill the power the four passengers that were sitting in the cabin were trying to get into cockpit screaming "FIRE!". Being a clever little devil that I am (well not so little, I'm 6'5".) I had a crash ax in the cockpit, mainly because of other things that had happened to me other aircraft. Very, very fortunately the passenger riding in the co-pilot's seat was an ex-Air Force pilot. I gave him the airplane and was able to go back and take care of the fire.
The baggage compartment and headliner was not in very good condition by the time I got through I'll have to admit. But that was okay, the chief pilot chewed my arse out and said I should have had the passengers put the fire out. I had suspected that he was an idiot, now I had no doubt.
Heard about your incident from G.Cruz who was MAI's Avionics chief from 71 -85
I wished I had a camera in the cockpit to take a picture of my face when I looked down and saw that throttle moving all by it's self!
It was mind boggling!
Now I did fly the last series of the short model with the big engines, just on a demo flight. It had a name, not a letter, I can't remember the name now (comes with getting old). I will admit that airplane was very impressive.