Being kinda new here, I went all the way back to the beginning and read the thread about the most ubsurd claims we’ve heard and determined that those guys are nation wide and running strong. Run into one last week end that had a stock’68 Torino, 390, that would run 9 flat and drove it everyday to work. Well.. I keep hearing the same story now and again and figured it was BS, but was looking at the vintage pictures thread and saw a complete engine blown apart at the crank and sitting on the drag strip. Kinda got me thinking... What I’ve heard many times was a head blowing completely off and coming through the hood leaving a perfectly square hole. Could I get some opinions/ testimony on this legend. Thanks Bones
the only thing i have ever seen come off the top of the engine is a blower...on a 10,000hp dragster every other engine failure i have seen with parts leaving the engine has all been bottom end. (usually the part that leaves is a chunk of the block where the connecting rod tries to escape)... even when a valve falls into the chamber it tends to push the rotating mass out of the bottom not pop the head off. but, lets say we could get the head to totally separate from the block (sheer off +/-17 head bolts with approximate sheer strength of 120,000psi each) you still have to have enough force left to carry the 35lb hunk through the metal hood (probably a hood brace as well)... i really have to say it is probably a BS story... IMHO
Was running 10 years ago at a test and tune and saw a balancer go thru the hood and land 30 or so yards away. Thank god not on the bleachers.
I have seen an El Camino that had a ragged opening in the firewall from a flywheel breaking loose. The exit hole in the top of the cowl was fairly clean. I have also seen tiny slices in a Corvair hood, caused by it's fan shedding it's blades. That was kinda funny, as it took a couple of days for him to figure out what the "tink!" noise was.
Had a fan come apart, straight up thru the hood. Few seconds later it came back down and landed in the middle of the hood. I was impressed.
The dumbest Urban Legend is the gal who had a Corvette with "if you can beat me you can eat me" painted on it. On this site some HAMBer's even said they saw it.
Back in high school a friend of mine put $20 on the dash in his 80’s pos. As the other guy reached for it he 2 footed the brakes. He ate the dash pretty good It was an asshole move but pretty funny just the same Andrew
About time to dust off the 710 cap or the Pontiac Goolie or the Coke bottle in the quarter panel myths and the multiple people who saw it happen
There's enough truth to these so that it won't die. I watched a 'Dyno Fails' video a week or so ago and it was pretty amazing some of the 'stuff' that blew off. My favorite was a turbo rice rocket that exploded, shedding more than few external parts, but as the camera panned the carnage the 10" diameter hole clean through the middle of the block caught my eye. If you look at a lot of the 'race' blocks for sale, the extra webbing/ribbing added to some wasn't done just for the hell of it... I've personally seen a late SBF block split in half right down the middle. But big loads of boost or nitrous is usually required...
^^ coke bottle myth^^^ I had a new caddy come in the shop, it was about a year old and the old lady had gotten rear ended. My job was to pull the quarters, fit the deck and door gaps so the body shop could replace the quarters. Well I got the quarters pulled and shaped and I had to cut a hole in the right quarter to access and pull the trunk floor. Inside the quarter was a big zippo lighter case about the size of your fist and it was full of big washers and nuts with a note that said " how long did it take you to find me?" When the lady came to get her car I showed it to her and she asked to keep it to show to the caddy dealer, she said it had been there numerous times for a bad rattle in the rear end. A month later she stopped by and said it was nice and quiet and that had definitely been her rattle. So some myths could indeed be true. I've found numerous other things, large bolts with nuts and washers etc. Of course after almost 40 yrs of doing this I guess it's no surprise.
seen fan blade through the hood 12 bolt parts through the cover my buddy in high school had a 65 chevelle built an aluminum rod engine out of used parts put a good clutch and pressure plate in it slung the disk off some of our friends wanted to go out in it on the weekend bought a napa reman and put in it the first time getting on it slung the disk off the clutch. they took it back for a refund .that kinda fun didn't last long
When I worked at jag, we pulled the dash out of a car and written on the bulkhead was HELLO YOU DAMN YANKEES !! Had a Honda in one shop I worked at under the back seat was one of the factory line screw gun zip gun deals stuffed under the seat Had a harmonic balancer sepperate on my s10 and when I shut the truck off the outer shell came loose and rolled away. They all sound stupid but true!
Word for word, the same story that I've heard a dozen times, except for the Zippo twist. Well played. It's always a Cad and it's always a note asking the same question.
L-E-G-E-N-D .....is that somewhere, sometime, and someone within the HAMB heirarchy won THE National Spelling Bee. I'll go ahead and take you out of the running for that candidate. The search continues ..... HAMB on, please. Don't mind me ....
I don't care if you believe me or not. I was there and it happened to me personally. Shit happens whether you choose to believe it or not.
This is a real urban legend that is 100% false: "It crystallized and broke" As HAMB Metallurgist, I can say that this phrase has been stated on HAMB in threads with a broken part. This statement is completely false - because ALL metals are crystalline. That is their structure when solid. It is always crystalline. The reason you might here people say this is because when the uninformed look at a fracture surface it can look crystalline in appearance. Well, duh, because the metal is crystal structure. Along the same lines another metallurgy related urban legend: "Chrome plated parts will fail due to embrittlement" This one is mostly false, but there is some minor truth about it. Only plated heat treated parts that have high hardness and a susceptible metal (most steels are susceptible) and a high applied static load, can sometimes fail by hydrogen embrittlement. HE will be a failure within 72 hours, many times within a few hours. It is NOT a sustained failure. Any long term sustained cracking is going to be a fatigue crack. Not HE. Fatigue is cyclic tensile loading of the part that initiates and propagates a crack until it finally has sufficient crack length that the part fails catastrophically. Almost anytime you hear that a part was embrittled by plating and that caused it to break will be a false statement. Unless the part failed within 72 hours after being installed and loaded up, it was not embrittlement. Non-heat treated parts will not fail by embrittlement. Only parts like springs, bearings, or maybe some wear type parts are heat treated.
Kid, when I was in spelling class in the previous century, they stood us up against the walls of the room and asked us to spell words. If you misspelled a word you had to sit down... I sat while the dumbasses stood! Thought I was pretty smart! Shows doesn’t it! Bones
I am guilty of writing some disparaging comments on the top of a trans, and behind some parts on a couple of High Dollar muscle cars. It was the end of a very crappy job, and to say I was disgruntled is an understatement.
Many times I've heard of lightened flywheels exploding and causing damage but I saw this one myself at the HAMB drags 2 or 3 years ago.. One of the HAGR class dragsters pulls up to the line running a 302 "Jimmy " with a 3 speed. He comes bustin off the line and at the top of 2nd gear I see something fly out of the rail and over towards the crowd while the rail slows and the crowd goes "OHHhhhhh"! Turns out the flywheel came apart at high RPM and the thing I saw was a hunk of flywheel. It zipped straight over toward the crowd lined up along the fence with cars and trucks nosed up there. The offending piece hit {I think it was} Pork'nbeaner's pickup's mirror and broke the mirror arm off the truck! Missed everybody but came close to disaster.
The Jalopy Journal
