High Speed Explosion
- Thread starter gto78
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Well for some people it could have been a total loss. I was very lucky. I was a college student with no money. I came home to visit my parents/friends for the weekend. I also was working part time at Publix (local food chain) and had been for many years, so they let me work at the Daytona Beach store (at college) and the other store where I grew up in Palm City.Minion1186 said:
The car blew up late friday night/saturday morning @ 1:30am and I had to be back to school monday morning. We towed the car home (at that time the rear axle was rolling again) and I began pulling the engine and all the other pieces at about 2 am. I quit working on it around 5 am. After sleeping a few hours I woke up and started calling junk yards. We found a TH350 transmission in the trunk of an old grand prix, and I got it for only $10 knowing that they would not give me any money back or exchange if it didn't work. Also got a driveshaft there, and another plastic fan shroud since mine was destroyed from the engine tilting back. I got some universal bendable exhaust pipes from the local Rose Auto Parts, and my friend there warrantied the broken starter even though the housing was broken. I had a spare flywheel and torque converter since we were always racing and swapping parts. I had a spare 400 block too.
I pulled everything from my engine block and installed it into the other block, just had to buy a gasket set. I installed the engine and $10 transmission and made a half assed exhaust system myself with side pipes. We finished putting it together around 1 am sunday night/monday morning. I put it in gear and it actually shifted. Unfortunately after 2 miles it quit shifting 3rd gear. We loaded it onto the trailer and towed it to Daytona at 6am monday morning. I only had to drive 3 miles from my apartment to the school, but it sucks having only 2nd gear with 3:73 gears.
Then the rear locked again and I figured out the real original problem. A week later I borrowed money for a transmission overhaul, and I was back in business.
Hey, pontiacgp, I think you miss understood him, although, it might have been me. What I'm guessing he meant is that it all could have been avoided had he replaced the $1 bolt. $1 could have fixed the origional problem, which is the irony of the situation, but since (I'm guessing) he didn't "know" it needed replaced, he didn't replace it, and it broke, escalading the damage to what he said it was. And, ya, I bet there was more problems with the rear end than stated... AFTER the pin slid out of the carrier... but he never specified that, so you can't call BS because you don't know. Besides, there is no reason to make a big deal out of this and throw a fit calling BS, settle down and start acting what I'm assuming is your age.
2fit661ca said:
Thanks, your exactly right, if I had replaced the broken $1 bolt then all that could have been avoided. As far as other rear end damage, the only other thing I found wrong was that big steel pin had a slight bend in it, and the other half of that $1 bolt was sheared off and stuck inside the big pin. I replaced them both with parts from another rear I had from racing spares.
Well sense it is years after it happened, I have to say that this would have been like the coolest thing to have on video 8)
I wish I did have it on video. To this day it's still a pretty big story my friends bring up once in a while. Also my dad loves to remind me and everyone else about how I woke him up in the middle of the night to drag the car home, and deal with the emergency vehicles etc, and how we half *ss rebuilt the car in 1 1/2 days. Back then I didn't have a cell phone, and video recorders were the ginormous VHS tape types. All I have is a vivid memory of the explosion and the face full of shrapnel, and so does my friend Mark who was riding with me.
The thing about stories is that they are stories. Not everything is remembered exactly. Nothing against you, that's just what can happen. I'm also not saying that's the case this time around.
Heck, my brother had some kids in town with Fox body Mustangs not long ago thinking they could take him down in his supercharged '02 GT.
So they went out to a deserted road and and had a go. The other driver had a friend there that witnessed everything. As my brother tells it, the 5.0 pulls out in front right away. My brother with street tires, 4.10 gears and the 400rwhp is having hooking obviously.
He catches them by the time he's in 4th and pulls by like their standing still.
The story from the other kid was that my brother pulled the front wheels 12" off the ground.
:lol:
Heck, my brother had some kids in town with Fox body Mustangs not long ago thinking they could take him down in his supercharged '02 GT.
So they went out to a deserted road and and had a go. The other driver had a friend there that witnessed everything. As my brother tells it, the 5.0 pulls out in front right away. My brother with street tires, 4.10 gears and the 400rwhp is having hooking obviously.
He catches them by the time he's in 4th and pulls by like their standing still.
The story from the other kid was that my brother pulled the front wheels 12" off the ground.
:lol:
Guys, I had to clean this topic up due to some language issues and some heated remarks that were made between a couple of members. Keep in mind this is a public forum. Any personal matters should be dealt with through the PM system and not made public through use of the forums in general. Any further conflicts will be dealt with accordingly.
FE3X CLONE said:
Yeah it's true that "stories" can get twisted and usually exagerated over the years into bigger and bigger stories. I've seen that quite a few times. However I'm not telling a story, I'm just stating the facts, I'm not giving opinions on who looked faster etc. The fact is that at 6,000 rpm in 3rd gear the rear locked, there was a major explosion, and both myself and my friend were pelted in the face with hot metal debris and pieces of the road which were coming through a hole in the floor, caused by the transmission that had just been ripped off the engine. The other fact was that we found a driveshaft that looked like a pretzel, and a bunch of pieces of the transmission scattered over 1/8th mile, all steaming. Another fact was I had to use the fire extinguisher to put out some flames from the left over transmission fluid burning on the exhaust pipes. Another fact was the exhaust pipes were destroyed, bent up, flattened etc. Another fact was the block was cracked in several places, one place was the starter mounting bolt holes since the starter was ripped off- the other crack was on the back of the block from the flywheel spinning and hitting it after it was bent. Another fact was the fly wheel was bent into a "U" shape and the converter was barely hanging onto the flywheel with one bolt. There's a bunch of other things that don't need to be typed again, all just simple facts.
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