# Tool Talk > Wheels >  NHRA Funny Car engine explosion

## Jon

NHRA Funny Car engine explodes. Driver walks away unharmed. GIF and short video.

https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/h...y_car_fire.gif

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gunsgt1863 (Oct 30, 2017),

rossbotics (Dec 27, 2018)

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## marksbug

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee boom.poop. hurry up fix it!!!

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## PJs

Thank goodness that blower didn't hit him in the face...Package check!

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## Jon

Just following up on this. 2:36 interview with the driver Jack Beckman after the explosion.

Turns out Beckman is a former Air Force sergeant and drag racing teacher. One thing I didn't realize is the hazard created by the motor oil that the explosion throws onto the tires and the driver's visor.

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that_other_guy (Dec 30, 2018)

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## PJs

Impressive guy and for once a good interviewer! Really amazing the way he broke that down and his calm demeanor considering what he just went through. Thanks for the follow up Jon!

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## gunsgt1863

"MOPAR", well that explains it. I heard somewhere that dragsters tune their engines to the point of exploding and then back it off just a bit. Guess he didn't back it off enough.

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## marksbug

> "MOPAR", well that explains it. I heard somewhere that dragsters tune their engines to the point of exploding and then back it off just a bit. Guess he didn't back it off enough.



 not really quite like that, they tune it to make the run they think they need to make to beat the guy in the other lane.if the guy in the other lane is running 4.20's all weekend there is no reason to tune for a 3.70 run when a conservitive 4.10 will do just fine. All of those parts are highly stressed and it dosent take much for it to go boom.if everything go,s good there is no issue, if you spin the tires that unloads the engine and nitro dosent fire with no load.so all that fuel is just being pumped in and not spent.that can do many things including hydraulically lifting the cylinder head right off the engine, pushing a rod out,pushing the crank out,spliting the billet cylinder block ,or nothing but lost horsepower and slower run. there is no reasom to run balls out every run.that waste $$$ and parts and looses races. a 3.70 run may be just fine and the 4.20 guy may end up like fast jack did. **** happens fast around 300mph. it's usualy the less expensive parts that fail and cause issues when a part fails. air hose leeks/breaks and no clutch management..boom.

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gunsgt1863 (Nov 3, 2017)

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## Frank S

Loved the comment we have other engines and more bodies and a couple hours to get it back together

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## marksbug

??? hours??? no, 45 min nowdays to totally rebuild the car, or build a new car.( yes new cars are sometimes totaly built when a winning car is crashed byond repair, but!! the new car can be a used car or a totaly new car but not run at that paticular event,new rule this year) 2 weekends ago just that thing happened to the top fuel points leader ( cap co car), they had to build a totaly new car from a bare frame after the other one was totaled out just past the finish line.I think it was texas or kansas I dont remember....wasent there so it's kinda fuzzy...last time I ran in tex was a blast though and pissed off some of the texans when we won thier "engine builder shootout" sponsored by sunset engines,,,and there was a sunset car(their car I think) in the other lane in the finals in topsportsman next to ours...witch we won...that was truly sweet. and we only had a small Fulton motor....well it was smaller than our big one.... the tv schedule has screwed over the racers at those events. it's get it out there weather it's safe or not...thans not good,but the safty equip is very good.

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## Jon

Drag racing car explodes, driver climbs out. Almost looks like he got a boost from the explosion. Did he win?



Your browser does not support the video tag.

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rossbotics (Dec 27, 2018)

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## Frank S

Out in front all the way.

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## 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?

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## marksbug

yes that was cruze pedragone, he won that round.

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PJs (Oct 15, 2018)

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## Jon

Your browser does not support the video tag.

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baja (Dec 30, 2018),

jimfols (Dec 26, 2018),

rlm98253 (Dec 26, 2018),

rossbotics (Dec 27, 2018),

Seedtick (Dec 29, 2018),

that_other_guy (Dec 30, 2018),

will52100 (Dec 26, 2018)

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## 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.

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## 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

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PJs (Dec 26, 2018)

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## 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.

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## PJs

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

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## 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.

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KustomsbyKent (Jan 2, 2019),

NortonDommi (Dec 27, 2018),

PJs (Dec 26, 2018)

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## 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.

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## arvidj

If you look at the video frame-by-frame there are several frames where you look down thru the cylinders of the block as it spins. Where one normally expects to see pistons and crank a view of the white and red of the hood show up clearly. I am assuming said pistons and crank exited the vehicle with a similar velocity (Newton's third law or something like that) in the opposite direction of the block. We don't see them because the vehicle probably drove over it (probably some number of Murphy's law).

I counted 4 turbos. Two at the very back that seem to have be in parallel feeding two more that seem to be in series. I have heard of systems like that with a claimed 100+ psi at the intake manifold.

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PJs (Dec 27, 2018)

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## PJs

> If you look at the video frame-by-frame there are several frames where you look down thru the cylinders of the block as it spins. Where one normally expects to see pistons and crank a view of the white and red of the hood show up clearly. I am assuming said pistons and crank exited the vehicle with a similar velocity (Newton's third law or something like that) in the opposite direction of the block. We don't see them because the vehicle probably drove over it (probably some number of Murphy's law).
> 
> I counted 4 turbos. Two at the very back that seem to have be in parallel feeding two more that seem to be in series. I have heard of systems like that with a claimed 100+ psi at the intake manifold.



Absolutely right about the 4 turbo's but the block was pretty muddy video to see that the cylinders were empty although whiteish. Interesting to see how it came apart and what stayed together considering a possible 100+psi...Wow! Strapping oneself into a bomb...Pass, not the right physics for me let a lone a Murphy number!

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## Radioman

What were looking at is the upper half of the engine. The crank, rods and pistons are still bolted to the transmission. The block split at the base of the cylinders. An amazing failure. At least thats how I see it. At first I thought the row of cylinder holes Wes where the head bolted on but it is where the rods and pistons go in after coming off the crank.

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PJs (Dec 30, 2018)

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## marksbug

raido man may be correct, that may be the bottom portion of the block.Ive seen a few that broke out all the mains, but never seen a movie so exciting,stuff flying,smoke and tumbling. there are a few vid's of engines exploding similuar to this on eue tube....or is the oops tube... I see what looks like 3 turbos. the one I worked on at bristol had 2 1 big(the bigest Ive ever seen on a road vehicle) feeding a tiny turbo. I wonder just that the turbine speed was in the tiny turbo....

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## Jon



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PJs (Jan 5, 2019),

Tule (Sep 21, 2019)

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## PJs

Surprisingly not very loud when it went off...and glad the driver didn't take a rod to the chin based on the damage to the top of the cab.

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## Jon



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Seedtick (Feb 26, 2019)

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## bruce.desertrat

And THAT is why Don Garlits developed the rear-engined top fuel dragster...

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## Jon

Your browser does not support the video tag.

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Andyt (Sep 21, 2019),

baja (Sep 22, 2019),

Seedtick (Sep 20, 2019),

Tule (Sep 21, 2019)

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## Frank S

> <video controls autoplay loop>
> <source src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/hmt-forum/black_sheep_pulling_semi_blowup.mp4" type="video/mp4">
> Your browser does not support the video tag.
> </video>



Prime example of packing too much power into the engine.

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## marksbug

zoom zoom.....zoom zoom zoom.....zoom zooom zooom zoooom!!! :Banana Dance:  zooom zoom zoom BOOM!!! :Head Scratch:  **** HAPPENS ( forest gump) :Cool:

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## VinnieL

OK who forgot to torque the motormount bolts?

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## marksbug

many dont even have "mount bolts".....just saddles, sometymes clamps.

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