Do you folks have any good stories about blowing an engine like a true champ? Here's mine. When I was in high school, I was doing a burnout in my 1972 plymouth Fury III. I had it held in 1st, beyond redline, and it was awesome until that 318 4bbl broke the camshaft in two, and the distributor shaft. To this day i'm not sure which one went first. But it sounded like the crank snapped! LOUD! The poor car never drove again....

 

in 76 with a 64 baracuda, 273/275 hp 4 speed. during a race, ripshifting into 4th, the front u joint went, and as the tach went past 9,000, the crank snapped, the flywheel hit the road and came up through the rear floor and out the back window. motor parts spread over 1/2 mile of road. my last non ford vehicle.

 

i have blown up way to many racing. most of the time i oiled down engishtown and left engine parts all over .worst though was blowing a fuel harley . any man can feel the or think of the pain of that. the engine let go at top end

 

(verb)
See also: 'Catastrophic Disassembly', 'Blown', 'Scattered', 'Dis-construction', 'Major Self Induced Overhaul', and 'Fragged' (Adjective (to be tence): 'to frag...' Example: "It's gonna frag itself to bits")

Buddy of mine got in a rev-out contest with some joker at a Taco Bell, he was in a C-10 with a 350 2-bolt in it.

It was way cool- until it SLAMMED LOUDLY, JACKED, and SIEZED....
The whole truck lurched to one side because the revs were absorbed by the engine mounts!

One of the rods that came out of that engine was bent in a distinct "S" curve...


TJC: You dang lucky that flywheel didn't go UP instead of down - it would have been like a buzz saw loose in the car!

This is the reason for scatter shields and hardened bell housings in racing. Safety is a major issue - invest in it and live a little longer...

 

Not a car engine, but a few of my friends were over, and we were playing with a lawnmower. We had the blade off and were just holding the throttle wide open. it was cranking probaby 5000rpm, then the connecting rod broke, went out side of the block, the piston came out of the cylinder and got whacked by the still spinning crankshaft. It was fun!

 

My 79 460 (502). When being built, the guy at the machine shop said noooooo, you don't need those $900 triple value springs from Ford SVO, these cheaper Crane singles will work just fine. Had it running for about two months and came to a stop light and noticed a cylinder missing. Later that night I did a compression test and found low compression in one cylinder. Popped the valve cover and sure enough the valve spring was busted; lucky for me the valve stayed in the head. Go back to the machine shop, where they proclaim "oh my, must have been a bad spring, we'll get you another" I say are you sure? Maybe we should go with those Ford SVO springs. No, they assure me...

Fast forward three months...

I'm letting a friend use the truck while his car is in the shop. He calls me all nervous and says it's making a baaaaad noise. I tell him a valve spring is busted (and this time the retainer didn't stick) and not to worry about it (he knows nothing about engines). I go to pick it up and its hammering the crap out of that valve. It's in a bad area of town but only about three blocks from my office so I figure I can nurse it there, the engine's shot anyway. So I get her going and as I come to the first intersection the light turns yellow so I gas it (not wanting to get it stalled at a major intersection).

What a hoot, it went up like a NASCAR engine let go. If I thought it sounded bad hammering that valve, this now was truly amazing. It sounded like a dozen steel ferrets kicking the crap our of each other in the crank case. The coolant and oil smoke was nothing short of amazing.

In the end only the stroker crank was usable. It turned a piston *sideways* in a cylinder, broke the cylinder wall, pretzeled a conn rod, just beautiful.

FWIW, went back to the machine shop with the second broken spring. This time I said looky here, number two. At this point they agree to buy me the SVO springs. I say you ready to buy the rest of the engine parts? What? Yup, took out the whole engine this time. They stood behind it. I gotta give them that.

 

When I was in college, I drove my mother's old 81 Lincoln Mk VI. It had a 302 with central fuel injection and no oil control or compression piston rings to speak of. It would never start on its own, you had to remove the air filter cover, spray it with ether starting fluid, cross your finger and crank it, and most likely repeat the cycle 2 or 3 more times before it started. Also, it burned oil. A lot of oil. I had figured that I could go about a 100 miles at 55 MPH or 5 days of "city driving" on 5 quarts of oil. It was the 5/100/55/5 rule. (Great gas mileage though, 4 mpg city, 8 mpg highway, if it started at all.) The trunk was full of cheap oil and starting fluid cans. Never had to change the oil, it would change it's own oil every 5 days. One year, after the christmas break, I decided, in the middle of my trip back to college to floor it and see what happened. I saw what happened alright... I hit 112 MPH and kept it there for a good long while. (digital dash) Not bad. When I got home, the car was making strange noises, steam and smoke were pouring out and the engine suddenly died and I coasted into my apartment's parking lot. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that there was a good sized crack running from the front of the engine block all the way around the corner and back along where the driver's side cylinder bank met the block, it ran pretty much to the rear of the engine. Coolant and oil were spewing out of that large crack. Oh oh! looks like I forgot the 5/100/55/5 rule! It used 5 quarts at 55 mph, but at 112 mph? How many quarts of oil did that require? I never found out but the engine block was seized and completely trashed so it was more than 5 quarts. My parents were livid, so much so that I had to walk for the following 6 months.

 

The second best was the 355 SVO in my 69 cougar. Ran lean at the top of second on the juice and literally burnt the valve seat and some head material from around the exhaust value on number 2. Funny thing was it just missed on that cylinder and you could hear that valve rattling.

Oh yea, and on the engine before that (stock block 351) I blew the ring lands off the piston on number 3. Didn't know anything was wrong until I heard a squeak at idle. Found the low compression, poped the head, valves were fine, poured some gas in the cylinder and just watched it run through to the crank case. Boy did that piston look funny when I popped it out. (Hence the SVO block).

 

I had a '75 or '76 Maverick that I was taking some parts out of before I junked it. I had no use for the inline 6 in it so I fired it up and put a hammer on the gas pedal. I was 18 and wanted to see what an engine blowing was like. After about 10 minutes at full throttle my father came out and got on my case so I stopped. Never did blow. Probably a good thing - dad hated oil on his concrete....

 

The part that it did'nt blow does'nt surprise me.
The fact you didn't over rev does......But Its a ford inline,They're tough sons of b******.

 

Oh, man!!! You win that race by default!!!

 

Never had a catastrophic engine failure on a street engine, but on my mini-stock, two races from the end of the season and leading the points race by 40 points, I was hot-lapping the car and thinking "Wow, she feels fast tonight..." when a rod broke at about 7000 rpm and went right through the block. There was hole in each side that you could stick your fist through.

In my Late Model, I got pushed off the track by an idiot and was so P.O.'d that I gassed the crap out of it pulling back onto the track and scattered the clutch. Yeah, I'm thankful for scattershields, mine's got nice dents all around the inside of it. (So who's the idiot now...?"

I did have a catastrophic transmission failure one time, however. I was passing a semi going downhill in my dad's '70 Dodge P.U. with a 383 when the trans blew at about 90 mph. The trans locked up solid, the u-joints on both ends of the driveshaft broke and spit the driveshaft out the right side. When I coasted to a stop the trucker was laughing his head off as he went by. Looking at the trans, the case wase broken in half all the way around, the only thing holding the rear half to the front half was the pan.
The worst thing about it? My dad was with me at the time! He just looked at me and said, "We wern't THAT late." -TD

 

At least he took it well!

 

Also 'ventilated block', 'grenaded', 'blowed up' (mainly used in the South), 'scattered', and 'shelled-out' (term used when a turbine or compressor wheel comes apart in a jet engine).

I've never blown an engine, although I did drive over 100 miles with no oil pressure. The pump driveshaft snapped. My dad had a close call once, though. He had a '57 Fairlane with a 292 and a 3-on-the-tree. He was reving his engine and showing off at the Mugs Up drive-in. Something cut loose, put a dent in the hood, then shot off out from under the car. It turned out to be a counterweight that was attached to the damper.

 

When I was a kid, my neighbor bought a Plymouth GTX for his brother that was returning from 'Nam.
I don't remember what was in it, but, he pulled out onto this long straight road in our neighborhood, and got into it. Smoke billowed out from under the back wheels for what seemed like an eternity, then he took off.

He went about 100 feet, when. . . . .
BAM!!! Cling, clang, clang, clang, clang.
One heck of a lot of smoke, steam, antifreeze and oil from under the hood.

Never did see what happened under the hood, but, the hood was buckled. This guy had it towed away.
Pretty car. It had 35 miles on it, when it blew.
I'll never forget it. We moved from Tennessee before he got the car back.
September, 1967. . .