For Gear Heads - Tractor Bang

It vaporized.

Wonder if it was an RP part?

YIKES. The block came through the hood, and got ran over by the back wheel..

About two years ago, I built a valvetrain for a tripple turbo charged

3208 Cat motor. The valvetrain worked perfect. But it split a rod, and sawed a hole in the block. It was making an awesome pull at the time, too...

Scott:

Not exactly, if you watch close you can see it launch out of the engine compartment and land on the ground.

What's RP mean?

Bob, Rapid prototype?

Best, Steve

HN:

So tractor pulling is one of your hobbies?

I've ventilated blocks with heavy nitrous usage. It's always messy, but NOTHING like that tractor block launch. That was choice.

GD:

Is so, I would conclude that it was a little TOO rapid, eh.

Did you notice that the guy on the sled didn't even flinch?

JC

No, my cousins. They had a Superstock with the 3208, three turbos, 85-90 lbs of boost, alcohol, etc.. Every single thing on that chassis was custom made. The heads were made from solid aluminum, custom crank, cam, etc, etc.. That last "Bang!" was the end for that, they sold the tractor to someone from Ohio, I think it is back together again. Now they picked up a couple of "Mini Rods" Blown, injected Keith Black motors. At least the parts for those are (relatively) Off the shelf. Total weight is around 2,500 lbs.. Their brother is also into the two wheel drives. Blown Injected Keith Black motor.

They were talking about getting another six cylinder block and starting to build up a Super Stock motor. I hope they do, it would be fun to design and build some more parts again. Back around 2001, They were building a "garden tractor" with a (?) Subaru motor. I built the bell housing, transmission, injector pump drive, and a few other parts for that.

I'm glad someone can afford to let me play with their stuff.

Bingo.

The parts are stacked from an STL, and some of them look like they were built by "mud dauber" wasp's or cliff swallows (cough).

BottleBob wrote in news:MNSdnUmAQq4reL_XnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

I've seen my share of those.......not quite that "vivid", but the results looked eerily similar.

Had a boy out in town (18), who's father died around christmas. Heart attack, 46 years old. Anyway, the boy had been saving to build a "good" motor for his 73 chevelle. Several of us 'rodders got together and figured we'd help him. So we finished purchasing what he didn't have (holley, ignition, gaskets, etc) Local shop donated the remaining machine work. One of the guys had a shop in middle of town where he built rods, so we used his place to build it. Got the boy in there and had him do a lot of the work, under our instruction. (He did learn a lot.) We built a 'nice' 383 for it. Nobody dyno'd it, but it was pretty stout for a non-gasser, normally aspirated, streetable motor, felt lower 500 hp/high 400hp range, given the car size.

About 3 weeks after it was built, I see him come out of his apartment, hop in it, crank it and gap it half-wide-open right from cranking....

Told him...you're gonna blow it up...no oil up in that motor yet.

Two weeks later... out of the apartment... crank..

2/3rds-wide-open from crank...

BANG.......!!!!!!!

Parts scattered all the way across the street....I don't think we even found them all.

Rod/main bearings don't much like having no oil.....

Pretty good fireball out of it...

And a hard teenage lesson learned...

He then runs it over with the right rear tire! Must have been worse than a bucking bronco! Looks like a nitrous oxide overload - might as well put dynamite in the cylinders.

Jon