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Carnage.

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aeronca65t

aeronca65t

Great Pumpkin
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Kent Carnage!

I thought Kent engines were unburstable. Guess not.

This lump came out of Cal Trumbo's Formula Ford Kent engine during a practice session at the Jefferson 500.
There is actually part of the block attached to it.
This was #4 piston.
The flywheel was still attached to the remainder of the crank and you could spin it by hand.
This apparently happened while the engine was at a moderate RPM and not screaming. No oil pressure problem and no overheating. It just let go. Weird.

Nial-McCabe_Jeff-500-09-202jpg.jpg


Nial-McCabe_Jeff-500-09-203jpg.jpg


Nial-McCabe_Jeff-500-09-159-1.jpg
 
Holy Crankshaft Batman!

Its odd to me how it all looks brand new and in fantastic shape minus the broken bits. I guess it just goes to prove, yet again, that there's no such thing as a bullet proof engine.
 
Pretty bizarre looking with that chunk of block web hanging there with the cap.
The water bottle label NO EXCUSES kind funny in that picture . That’s an odd failure
 
Make a mount for it and hang it on the wall.....it is cool looking in an abstract art sort of way...nice conversation piece for the garage if nothing else.... :smile:
 
Sacrifice to the God of Speed.

Or is it Goddess?
 
That definitly should be turned into a trophy!!! LOL
Rob
 
Engines never break when you're wailing the stuffin' out of them. Always on the cool down lap or pulling in the pits. 'I don't know why it broke, I wasn't doin' anything'.
 
Breaking a cranksahft, normally has little to do with low oil pressure or any other condition, it's just a aprt failure palin and simple. When I raced SCCA FP, I used EN16T cranks I wedged lightened, balanced, and would cycle them out after 25 weekends. I done this al ong time, and I seen cranks break, I guess I've been invloved in tow cranks breaking, one was on a support driver, it was a Comptune (Tabor) engine, I had been refreshing it, and trying to updating over a couple of years, we prepped it for the runoffs, even magnafluxed the crank, saw the test with my own eyes, it snapped the crank in tow laps on track, now mund this was seriously driven FP car doing 9000 rpms pretty regualrly. One of my personal FP engine built entirely by me, served me well for about 10 weekends, and then without any signs, sanpped a crank, it blew the entire back of the block off. I've saw really fast natioanl SCCA Spridget racer break Moldex billet crankshafts, botton line in racing no matter how well you prep it, no matter how good of stuff you buy, it can and will break eventually, sometimes sooner than later, it racing, stuff breaks.
 
Yeah, you definitely increase the fatigue cycle when you spin a three-bearing crank to 9000 rpm.
grin.gif


I saw Ray Stone's Bugeye a few weeks ago at the Jefferson 500.
I don't know if he was psyching the rest of us out or not but this tach redline was set for 10,000! :shocked:
 
10K?!? Optimistic! :smirk:

Broken bits are a racing consequence. And I've seen street engines come apart dramatically as well. No way to tell when, just that it WILL happen. I've a shard of a B-series block here as trophy of a grenaded street B-GT. Good O/P, no overheat, just *BANG!* and the rear-end locks. Quick bit o' pedal stabbin' and a BIG mess as a trail of evidence. :shocked:
 
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