I just posted in the cl***ifieds regarding a 348 conrod and I put up a picture of one I had in a 348 I lunched in 1996. Almost everything in that engine was destroyed except the cam and crank (go figure?!) which are still being used in my current 348. So I got to thinking. How many of you save your **** ups? Turn broken pistons into ashtrays or 2-piece cams into wall ornaments? I could never throw this particular rod away just because I can sit there and wonder at the sheer force/power it took to bend something like that. I was doing 70mph on the freeway when a valve spring broke and it dropped the valve down into the #3 cylinder and it sent the piston sideways. Shattered the block. (CSI eat your heart out!) So... Post your pictures of your **** ups/embarr***ments and tell a story of just what the hell you were doing/thinking just prior to trashing it! Here's mine... Travis
I used to work on a dirt track stock car, and one night the driver got in a huge wreck and the car looked like it was totalled. While the race was stopped for clean up, he came in the pits and we pulled the whole body off the car, fixed any huge damage and sent him back out on the track (all in about 5 minutes, if that). He was pissed about it and that seemed to just fuel him even more and he managed to go from last place to second driving it like I've never seen anyone drive a car in my life (he came damn close to actually winning too, the whole crowd was screaming and going ******* every time he p***ed a car, it was unbelievable.) afterwards, he gave me the door as a sign of appreciation and even autographed it for me. It's bent up just the right amount, like patina. Its got an awesome paint job too so I hung it up on the wall in my shop. It's one of the coolest things I own. I wish I could put the pictures up because i've also got pictures of the car after the race and you probably wouldnt even believe that it ran, let alone almost won a race.
I have a rod and piston out of a 427 sohc. That was the first high dollar engine I bought when I started racing. I kept it to remind myself to never trust anyone when it concerns the condition of a race engine. The guy told me it was perfect. 2 runs and the rod is hanging out the side. When I call him, he says: the bearings must of been worse than I thought. If he would have told me it needed bearings, I would have changed them. So much for my trust.
I have a Pontiac 287 thats been chewed to ****. I'll roll her over tomorrow and get some pictures. It broke the skirts off pistons 7 and 8, then the crank took the rods and wrapped them around itself but chewed the block to **** in the mean time. I'd of loved to been there when it did it. Had to of been a SERIOUS noise. Still got the motor, only good thing is the heads........gunna make a gl*** top table out of what's left. Bought the car that way and now that I've actually driven a 287.......GOD I wouldn't have it any other way. Talk about a turd. **x Brandy
A friend of mine was messing around with nitrous in a "STOCK" 305... needless to say it wasnt pretty, the first few runs went OK, but the 4th, tore of 3 rods, broke the cam into 6 pieces, broke the lower skirt of the block off, and the pan was only being held on my 2 bolts. was catastrophic. he has the pan and a couple rods and a piston of that motor hanging on his wall.
An aquantienance (sp? wtf ) that hangs around my shop sometimes just grenaded his stock 302Ford. hes got a '95 stang or so and had a pretty decent bottom end in the motor...drives it daily in the summer. Anyway he races it as well...drove it from Sothern RI to Epping, NH - 2cd p*** with a 2 stage shot (all @ the line) of 200 horse and about 6000 and the block broke in half.....pretty impressive. The crack goes all the way through the mains up through the cam bearings and into the lifer galley. He really does have 2 4 cylinder motors now. he ran half track before it let go and the motor stayed running till he got onto the scale Luckily he had AAA plus and they towed him the first 125miles for free and charged him $100 for the remainder he got lucky with that I'll try to get a picture when i get a chance
An example of what Arkracing said. Apperently late factory 5.0 Ford blocks are only good to 450 HP before block strength becomes a problem...
The Lyndwood rail I'm restoring ran a stock flywheel against the wishes of the engine builder, the racing version was out being refaced. Nobody got hurt, but a lady in the stands had her sholder bag ripped off by the flying debris.
Not a big blow up, but... I was 16 years old, and all I knew is higher compression is better. So I hade a machine shop shave the head on my Volvo four banger, then I installed it, not knowing that it brings the whole valvetrain down. I turned it over...and bent all the push rods...I felt pretty stupid... Can't belive I just confessed to that...
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75058 Yes.....I keep some of these "fun" momentos... And I thought jigsaw puzzles were hard....
Way back in 74 my buddy and I ran a 383 Road Runner at a local dirt track in the hobby stock cl***. We ran all summer turning it about 6500 then with about 3 weeks left in the season, we lost the clutch coming off the turn. My buddy, who was driving, managed to get it shut down before we broke the motor. One of the other racers came over and had us run his car the rest of the year. My buddies brother wanted to try racing, so we let him use out RR if he put in the clutch. He tore it down and decided he could get away with just installing a new disc with the old, scored pressure plate. He forgot to tell us that one... Anyway, about 4 laps into the race, turning it 6500 the clutch slipped coming off the turn, only he wasn't as fast as his brother. The motor made a funny poping sound, like a miss fire, for what sounded like 3 or 4 cylinders, and just quit running. I could still turn it over by the starter! Later, when we pulled the intake off, the #6 (or was it #5?) rod end was sitting against the bottom of the intake. OOPS It spun the rod bearings on #5 & #6 rod jurnal and one of the two rods seized onto the crank and destroyed the bottom of both cylinder walls and both pistons. The piston pin broke on the remaining rod and one of the rod bolts broke, and the rod came off the crank. It probably dropped down against the still spinning crank which kicked it back up between the two cylinder walls and then up through the lifter valley. It busted a two lobe section out of the cam, and finally stopped at the bottom of the intake. Pretty impressive! All the damage was confined inside the block except the rod coming through the intake valley pan, which you couldn't see with the intake on the motor. By looking at the motor you couldn't even tell it was broke, it still turned over by the starter, just sounded a little funny cranking over, and it wouldn't start! I kept that two lobe section of cam until just a few years ago. Gene
When I was in college I bought a winter beater to have there and run the 35 miles or so back home and work on weekends. It was a '77 Buick Electra with the corporate Pontiac 301, had about 136K on it. I should have p***ed on it when the good old boys I got it from told me it had had a head gasket changed, but it was $400, ran good and was solid. So.... One Friday morning I started it to run up to the auto shop and it started knocking. It was cold and snowy and I wanted to get home, so I figured I would chance it - I'd had a motor knock some before and I knew sooner or later I'd kill it if I wasn't careful. Well, I got about 7 miles. It was losing power in a hurry and finally it just clunked and stalled and wouldn't crank over. Back at cl***, I pulled the engine to swap it out for another 301 I bought off a kid there for like $100 (that one kept overheating, I got it almost home before giving up.. eventually did sell the car for $300, so that wasnt too bad). I tore it down to give the heads to the engine lab for kids to rebuild for credit, and for the hell of it pulled the pan. The #5/#6 con rods were a mess- the bearings were melted out, the one rod broken into three pieces, it had come apart on one side then the crank bent the other side off it. The piston had marks where it had bounced off the valves. So I saved that pair of pistons and rods. I even took them up to the ch***is lab, bead blasted them, and when we painted a Corsica in body lab I used some leftover clear to paint them. Some of the pieces sit on top of my monitor now. I think the only reason there was so little damage is the motor was such a dog. The busted rod slid down and blocked the crank from turning, or I might have got it running again. The original plan was to put them on a wall plaque with a little br*** tag like a car show trophy that read "my first blown motor" unless I came up with a good witticism of some sort. As is typical for stuff in this house, though, people have moved things around without telling me and I'm not 100% sure where all the pieces are now. A funnier one is the '77 Monte Carlo a kid I knew bought from a guy and messed around with over one summer a while back. He didn't know much about what he was doing and the kid he got the car from had treated it like ****. So when it threw a rod I wasn't too surprised. #1 came off if I remember right and blew right out through the oil pan. What was more amusing is it still ran and they drove it around some on 7 cylinders. Of course this is the same place where someone had donated a '70's Suburban for a work truck that ran, but just barely enough to move itself - until we went over a few bumps and the mouse-nest infested muffler fell off it. Then it ran great...
Uhh yeh exactly like that. Apparently the rotating ***embly pushes against the sides of the motor with so much force that the block splits in half. Nice Picture
Just t'other day one of my least mechanically inclined buds was driving to work in his newly acquired "winter-beater", a 91 S10 4x4, when "it made noises and stopped working". He had them drop it off at my place because I need the frame to put under my 52 chevy. I threw a battery in it to test the wiper motor for my beater and the 6cyl is getting replaced by a 283 anyway... so I just had to see just how bad it was... kinda like when you know you've stepped in dog**** and feel almost obligated to look anyways to see how vile it really is. It was a bitter cold morning so of course it let it warm up properly, listening to the soothing clack, clack, clack and then spun it up to hear the bang. My four year old son got to hear his first catastropic kill, and now I don't have to bother draining the radiator or oil pan. Awww come on... you know it's fun, and far more humane than playing with frogs and fireworks. I can't wait to yank it out and show little man what went wrong. Merry Christmas to all!
There is a scene in The Worlds Fastest Indian where they pan across a shelf full of broken pistons and such. On the shelf is painted Offerings to the gods of Speed
Mine would read Offerings to the Gods of Nitrous... I've blowed up 2 engines due to the stuff. I used the pistons and rods to make flowerboxes on my house... (because the flowerboxes were already there and I had to fill them with something...)
I still have all 7 of Buzzards cracked pistons... I was gonna keep the "2 piece" pontiac crank, but it was too heavy... I still have a chunk of my aluminum Mondello Block that was punched in when I got hit by the Drunk Driver. it was over 10 years ago and I still get a little sick when I look at it. (solid motor mounts and a badly bent frame=death to an aluminum block) aside from that, all I can say is olds stuff is HEAVY and it dosen't stick to a wall very good...
I'll have to second the thoughts of "wfo guy" in regards to trusting someone with a race engine... Didn't save much but it started off buying a used modified with an "nearly new 377" - bad things happen when the oil pickup is a cobbled together mess with holes in the pickup tube... Don't have the pics of that handy, but then I Put an old 355 that I built which had 3 seasons on it and the rest lasted until 5 laps into the feature when this happened... This is my mess - got pushed around into turn 3 by a guy that was too high and all I can think of is he panicked when he saw the wall and tried diving down and clipped my rear and spun me into the wall. Walked away but was sore for the next 4 weeks...
Here's one of my friends Top Fuel,417 Donovan Hemi blocks from Sonoma earlier in the year.The block only had a couple of runs on it. It blew up in the lights,just as he lifted.
Ahhh..the old "stick a fork in 'er, she's done" joke. Seriously, that made me laugh out loud. It's healthy to have a sense of humor about things like that.
Yeah,,after we pulled the dead bullet,I went to the concession stand & got a fork for humor purposes. The block is now hanging in a fellow compe***ors old school bar.
Don't got an pics but I got a bent valve from a nailhead on the mantle. I've had it for years. I had an exploded TCI T-350 that let go when I punched it at about 70 on Christm*** eve a few years back. But another HAMBer now uses it for setup. I got a broken POSI in the shed(9" Ford), same motor with a beefed T 400. Actually I've been tossing a bunch of totally thrashed parts just because they don't really make good spares, and if I won't rebuild it and use it again no one will. On a lighter note, I have a shift knob in the PUSHER that I've had for over 40 years, lost count of how many cars its been in. It was given to me by a good friend of my Dad's, a man that really liked little kids. Its always brought me luck, I can truthfully say that I never broke one with that shift knob in it. Knock wood. I think that when a little kid that I know gets to that point I'll p*** it onto him. Every one needs a lucky shift knob.
305 SBC in my '86 caprice. I thought it was a bad rod bearing. Like some others i figured I shoiuld try to make it home. surprizingly enough, I did get all the way home, but boy was she pounding...
and this one "ran when parked" It's a Mopar flathead. Looking at the wear pattern on the break, it actually did run like this for quite awhile...
31lbs of boost in a turbocharged Ford pump gas no bueno It smoked a little and was oil fouling that plug.
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