NHRA Funny Car engine explosion

[Frank S]

Out in front all the way.

[PJs]

Don't know the rules but it looked like he won by a good margin even after the engine blew. However the other guy may have shifted or pulled up a little early, just after the grenade went off but was still burning tires...around :18 and at :35-36 when they crossed the line?

[marksbug]

yes that was cruze pedragone, he won that round.

[Jon]

[marksbug]

wow!!! now that sumbitch come unglued!!! I wonder where the cylinder head went? Ill bet the cab has quite a smell in it.I Hope nobody was injured.
top fuel cars lift the heads, but Ive never seen one of them come off totaly.

[Frank S]

That is the whole top half of the engine, but I've never seen a large diesel engine that held the cylinder liners in the head like those of an integrated head and cylinder of a small motorcycle engine. they must have been pushing in the neighborhood of 10,000 horsepower

[marksbug]

I dont think it was intergrated, just the block let go and the cylinders are about all thats left after the head&outer block water jacket left town. probably around 3000 hp but **** loads of torque. I helped a guy running a diesel drag truck at Bristol tenn one year he was pushing over 160 psi into the cylinders, that thing was flying. he was broke, we were inbetween rounds and I showed him how to fix the small issue so they could make 2 more runs to get the license...sometimes it's the small simple stuff that seems to be the hardest to figure out. and a different set of eyes can make all the difference.

[PJs]

I'm having a feeling he had the boost set a bit high...Holy Kadoodle...gives me the willies.

[Frank S]

in the late 80's I built a 1693 cat engine for a friend of mine for his 76 KW with a 6x4 married box transmission and a 4 sp spicer behind that 38,000 Eaton SQHD rears auxiliary lift axle He spent just over $18,000 in parts plus my labor his goal was 600 Hp to the ground and 2000 torque. So that would have meant around 750 flywheel hp.
I told him that his rear ends were not going to hold the HP or the weight he would be pulling with his 3+3+3 trailer.
After everything was dialed in and the truck was put on the chassis dyno at a dealership in Dallas I set the waste-gate on the huge Switzer turbo to only produce 35 PSI boost which gave him right at 625 to the ground with no smoke or very little once the RPM's were up.
Anyone who has ever worked on or driven those old overhead cam cats knows that they can be turned up to stupid amounts of power as long as the internals match but there is 1 thing they can not take. let one get up to 220°f and stay there for a very short amount of time with the pyrometer temp above 1200° the head is going to crack at #4, 5 or 6 every time.
Well he twisted off the input shaft to the power divider on the front rear end within a month So I changed them out and installed a pair of Timken 44,00 lb top drop rear ends It wasn't hardly 9 months later he tightened down the waste gate to up his boost and turned up the injection pump even more than I had it set,on the first trip out after that he was under a 150,000 lb load with a borrowed trailer Needed more axles,grossing over 240K pulling a 8% grade bragging about how fast he was able to pull the grade forgetting to watch his gauges close enough. He told me later that just before the engine blew just as he was going over the top, he had 90 LBS boost then the pyrometer hit 1600° and the water temp spiked to 280°
I refused to do any more work on his truck after that.

[PJs]

You just Can't account for enormous ego sometimes and money without brains. Good on you Frank! Personally I wouldn't have worked on it the second time. The time I bastardized a 308 Dino Ferrari distributor to a Mercedes point system because the guy was too cheep to replace the distributor and friends with the Boss. I told him and the boss when he picked it up, He was on his own, I won't ever do that again & Don't Ever bring that car in here again...could have been worse, I could have told them what I really was thinking.