CamarosRUS

so im curious who has actually blown up their engine? lets here some stories and see some pictures of the damage. too much power and your crank snapped? i wanna see it

RB83L69

I've blown up .... more than I care to admit to.

The absolute worst, was a F*rd 351 Cleveland that broke the crank; pieces hit the cam, broke the block, valves crashed pistons, etc. Wasn't much left of that one.

I smoked a 283 that had some big heads and a big solid cam in it. Too much RPM too often. That was a fun car; it was in a Chevelle SS (the big block blew up... bummer) with a 4-speed; it had no leave whatsoever, but once it got up to around 4000 RPM, look out! You could peg the tach in 1st gear, and run all the way through all 4 gears, and the tach would never come off the peg. No wonder it blew up. It spun a rod bearing (the bearing actually rotated in the rod), and the metal it shed ate the main bearings too. When we tore it down, the rods were all (well, the 6 that survived, anyway) about .002-.003" egged. Nothing salvageable below the head gaskets out of that one either.

No pics. They hadn't invented photography yet at the time i ruined either of those.

I broke the crank of the 400 that was in my 83 car once. It had around 80,000 miles on the motor at the time. It still ran, and pulled itself into the garage. It broke in front of the #1 rod journal, where that journal meets the throw. So all 8 rods were still on one piece, and the other piece had the timing gear and the accessories and stuff on it. It had broken in such a way that the pieces couldn't move out of the way of each other, so everything continued to turn. Didn't run very good, but it still ran... barely.

And so on.

AlkyIROC

I've done at least 3. Worst had to be the original 383 that was in the car when I bought it. I think it threw a rod during one of the 7000 rpm shifts. I got about 200 passes on it before it failed. At least 5 valves are visibly bent in the heads. The cam broke in 3 pieces and tried going out the back of the block damaging the distributor and flexplate. 2 cylinders didn't have enough left in them to say they had pistons. I pulled the intake and the heads off and threw the rest in the scrap metal bin at work.

I've damaged a couple of BBC's also. 2 bad ones where pistons smaked the valves. When you break the head off a valve it does some serious damage to the head. I've scrapped 2 781 casting heads and had a Merlin head repaired. I've had at least 2 cylinders sleeved to fix cracks.

Last year was only minor damage with a spun main bearing. Had the crank repaired. Had the bearing cap replaced and the block line honed again

That's a hole through the top of the piston.

Air_Adam

I drove my gas-powered RC car into the river once... does that count?

It took in water, bent the con rod... so i took it apart, cleaned it, bent the rod straight again, and it ran kinda ok for awhile!

CamarosRUS

ouch, thats good stuff guys. havnt had the bad experience...yet i think after i hit the button on the new engine it may see the same fate.
Rb all i can say is thats what you get for racing ford, the worst ever
stephen thats a shame to see youve wasted more heads than ive owned!!!
air i dont think it counts unless you can make up a crazy story to go along with it

thecoolone

iTrader: (1)

Perhaps air's rc car had just outran an LG4, but at the 1/4 mile mark it went out of range, he lost control of it, and it went into the river.

IHI

iTrader: (1)

I'e never personally had an engine break up on me, broke a pushrod and lost a couple lobes on cams so that's the extent of mine.

Now my buddy has blown at least 1 motor a year for the past 3 years mainly because he's cheap. He just did a new 468 last spring and installed 2 peice valves because they were cheaper than the good 1 peice valves. He only shifted at 6K so it was'nt like he wound it up real tight, but all that spring pressure for his solid flat tappet finally took a toll on a run and we towed 'er back to the trailer. Got it home, pulled the carb and low and behold the big end of a valve laying in the bottom of the intake folded up like a taco LOL!! Ruined one of his 781 heads, 1 piston looked much like Stephens, but only scratched the cylinder a liitle bit, since it was a virgin it can be bored .040 to fix it so now biggie. Rods and crank checked out so he got lucky in the big picture.

Another buddy put together a 496 and bought used rods for it off the net, when getting them R&R's the shop pushed new rod bolts, but he did'nt want them. 4 passes later he windowed the block, luckily he kept the car under control and off the walls.

Another Ford BBF buddy had a crank snap right behind the first main.

I've mainly seen pistons beat to death, or holes burned in them from detonation, windowing blocks is pretty rare. Had another Ford buddy spend $12K on a BBF he had assembled, that winter he forgot to drain the water and install anti freeze, now he needs another block.

Anything can happen to anybody, but just from reading the above examples really shows how not using common sense and/or using half way decent parts can cost you more in the long run since you will be doing the same job twice!!! There's places to cut corners and places to spend a little more, even if that means the project will take a little longer to complete.

CamarosRUS

LMAO

Air_Adam

Not too far off actually

What happened was this...
My and my cousin had our RC cars running at a monster truck show that was in town. He knew a couple of the drivers, so we both got pit passes to hang out with them before, during, and after the show. We also got to use these RC cars on the track between 'events'... that led up to me breaking my car the first time... I decided it was a good idea to hit the motocross jump going faster than the motocross guys did

Its came down VERY hard, and completely destroyed the entire rear suspension and driveline. The crowd loved it (actually the show was back last night, and so were RC cars... guess i started something!)

It was very expensive to rebuild the car after that, since I was 15 and had no job. But after a couple months, I got it all fixed. Me and my cousin took it down to the river to run them for awhile, since there is a really nice little island there that all fairly hard packed sand with some nice jumps and stuff to play with. I hit a jump a little too fast again, and somehow, when the car hit the ground, the throttle return spring broke and it went at WOT right into the river!

That night I took the engine out and tore it all apart. I put all the parts in the dishwasher... block, head, sleeve, piston, crank, etc... after that, I put a little fuel/oil on the parts (its 2-stroke), straightened out the con rod with pliers, put it all back together and fired it.... it sounded different, but it still actually ran pretty nice. It still ran last time I fired it, but that was a long time ago.

rjmcgee

I think my worse was a 7.3 liter diesel in my old 89 Ford pickup. Blew white smoke for about 2 seconds and then locked up. I pulled the plug on the pan and nothing but bright green antifreeze came out. All of the coolant in the oil pan and never even had a chance to mix. Never pulled the heads off it yet to this day and that was 5 years ago. Guess those motors had a problem with actually breaking the cylinder wall. That is when I found out just how expensive these diesels can be.

rsn932

a friend of mine at school blew a connecting rod through the side of a V6 firebird block when he revved it up to 6 grand immediately after startup to try to see if the heat worked (insert hand slapping face here)

92MaroRS

one kid brought a motor from his dads Hobby stock into school once, pulled the intake off and the heads. valve hit a piston, caused all kinds of havoc, piston melted down into a glob, only thing that told me that it was a piston was about 3/4" long ring groove. hole in the side of the motor big enugh to fit your hand through. ruined a good camel hump head. chunks of cyl. wall about the size of my palm. only thing on it that was worth more than scrap price was passenger side head and the intake, the rest was junk.

tf0r1

my first car was a 1968 chevelle ss..Came stock with a BB 396...one night an 87-88 vette wanted to race (street)...I smoked him for almost 3 miles...and than.....bang!!!! shattered 3 pistons...more smoke than a forest fire!!! one of the saddest days of my life...not counting when i got married

RB83L69

Sing it, like you were doing a commercial....

"Have you blown up a F*rd.... lately?"

EvilCartman

iTrader: (1)

Only thing I've done is spin a few bearings in my old Nissan truck when it got starved for oil. One of my friends and I were driving down to Sacramento (about 2 hour drive) to get a door for his F*rd Granada (needed an engine after this trip). The straight 6 couldn't handle the constant 70 mph on the highway and blew chunks. Broke the camshaft in 3 spots, put a couple holes in the block and it still ran! Actually drove it up onto the trailer. The pan had about an inch of oil sludge built up and the pickup was just about blocked solid.

Fast355

iTrader: (2)

Saw a buick 231 blow up at school. Some dummy forgot to tighten the rod caps past finger tight. You could hear the engine knocking while it was cranking up. When it started the engine was just singing. Then POOOOWWW the rod cam out of the side of the block spraying pieces of block, rod, crank, and piston across the shop.

Air_Adam

HAHAHA!! Thats good

Sorta like what I used to think the old '80s Toyota commercials said (I was like 4yo at the time)...

"What are you doing to me, Toyota?"

FAST RS

I put 2 rods through my block made some nice holes in the oil pan twisted the oil pump driveshaft made a mess of the oil pan with big gaping holes and cant forget it destroyed the crank.