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A Day at the FIRM

Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2017 10:07 pm
by mooreken
I spent the day at the Starke/Keystone track. All and all it was an almost really good day. In the morning session there were only 6 cars for the road course. All the activities were for the Jeeps. This make the morning an open track from 9:00 till Noon. Just go out for as long and as many times or laps as I wanted.
This was the first time I ran the track with my "sticky" tires. Really made a difference. I was quite a bit faster than my other trips. I was able to keep the car in 3rd gear for a lot of the run. Before I was using 2nd for most of the run. The course was too long for 2nd and not long enough for 3rd with the street tires.
I ran 3 sessions before lunch. I was giving up before the car was done, tough to be getting older.
After lunch I ran two sessions and all was well. Now as to the 3rd run. Not so much. as you can see from the photos I think some of my pistons decided that they wanted to try swapping to another cylinder or something. Any way my new oil change with about $100 of Royal Purple oil ended up on the track. :GR::
The photos also show why I trailer my car to the track....I know how I drive. :ymdevil:
I won't know the extent of the damage for a while. (I'll post some pictures). It now seems that I don't have an excuse for not building a bigger motor. I have a couple of cranks that I can use and a spare block. One to get to 421ci or one for 430ci. While this seems like an easy choice, the 430 pushes the stock SBC 400 block to the max. Lots of places that can go wrong trying to make clearance.

All that being said of the cars that were there, the Cobra was the best looking and got a lot of attention from the Jeep people. And that is a big part of why we build them. Also the car did a really nice job on the track. I had several people stop by and tell me how nice and stable the car looked on the track. ..] That is also why we build them. Lol.

I figure it will take a day or so to clean all the oil from under the car and then the motor comes out.....I guess its a good thing I like to build motors.

Re: A Day at the FIRM

Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 8:17 am
by BlackSnake
Yikes, that first shot looks like the Exxon Valdez oil spill.... :W:

I'm guessing a rod let go? Did you miss a shift and over-rev it?

Re: A Day at the FIRM

Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 6:25 pm
by mooreken
No missed shift. Don't know what went first yet. A piece if the piston at the ring came out as I pressure washed the oil off. No water came out that I can tell. Bottom of the oil pan is all beat out.

Re: A Day at the FIRM

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 3:12 pm
by mooreken
https://youtu.be/HuipVePIxBo

Sorry for the low quality. I was able to edit the video down to just the 2mins. but I didn't find where to keep the HD.

This is the finish of a good day with a bad ending. I was even going to leave the track after this lap. As you can see I was going easy into the final turn and got to wide open throttle. Then things get quite. Just wind noise. I most likely should have gotten off the track but I wanted to let the track workers know that it blew up and there was oil on the track and these were the closest workers. I didn't leave much oil on the straight part of the track, the bottom of the oil pan opened up like a can opener and dumped most of the oil all at once. It did take them 30mins or so to get it all cleaned up.
I'll post pictures as I take the motor apart. I know that a piston blew up...a small piece of it with the ring land attached fell out while I was pressure washing the oil out from under the car.

Re: A Day at the FIRM

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 4:20 pm
by mooreken
Oil Pan.
'nuff said! ~~(/)

Re: A Day at the FIRM

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 5:04 pm
by Tom Wells
Ken,

Looks like the rear part of the oil pan opened wide and said AAAAHHH.

Keep us posted as to what you find when you get it all apart.

Tom

Re: A Day at the FIRM

Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2017 10:55 pm
by BlackSnake
The motor sounded very strong right up to the point where it all went quiet... :W: