External combustion engine - GIF

[Jon]

External combustion engine.




Previously:

NHRA Funny Car engine explosion
Engine explodes on dyno - GIF and video
NHRA engine teardown and reassembly - GIF

[Radioman]

That is an extremely heavy duty connecting rod. I bet when asked the operator said he was not abusing the engine at the time. I can’t even imagine the force necessary to do that to such a well-crafted component.

[metric_taper]

Seeing how much burned oil was on the connecting rod main bearing journal surface, it does appear this made much knocking noise before failure.

[NeiljohnUK]

Vorsprung Durch Technik, as driven by yet A(nother) U(n) D(oubted) I(diot) probably. Following the VW/Audi's emissions scandal, and a number of other German vehicle failures Merc road springs snapping due to corrosion after 5 years, BMW's killer front fork failures and AUDI TT's propensity to crash following rear suspension/wheel bearing failure, it's time to realise German high qwality no longer exists... Engineering by accountants has finally killed it off, if it ever really existed in the first place.

[hemmjo]

The way I see it, at 0:21-0:24 seconds, the bent rod and burned look of the bearing surfaces suggest the rod welded itself to the crank journal. Then the crank continued to turn which bend the rod, the rod then pulled the piston down out of the cylinder where the light weight aluminum piston was ground up by the spinning crank, much like it would be in a hammer mill at the recycling yard.

Many possible causes for the initial failure; engineering, misuse, etc. As mentioned above, all industries are now plagued by accounts running the engineering and production departments.

[12L14]

Actual external combustion engine(well, anemic proof of concept)