<VV> Autocross report (BIG BLOW-UP)

Paul Fox paulvair at yahoo.com
Mon May 21 09:05:40 EDT 2007


Group,
           You hear stoies about flywheel blow-ups Now I know why you need a scatter sheild in a front engined car.
           Yesterday at our Indy region autocross we had a good showing of Covairs.Warren LeVeque had his 64 roadster,Mike had his #45 Stinger and Jeff Rapp had his red coupe up and runniing again after his Yenko reunion cam gear problems.
         We had 3 run groups and I ran the last group. The others ran the second group.We were to get 5 runs. Mike had fuel pump problems and finished his runs in Jeffs car. Otherwise the Covairs did welll in run group 2.
          Then it was my turn to run the white car in group 3. The first 3 runs went well. Warren ,Jeff and Mike stayed after to watch my runs. They didn't stay long enough though! On the 4th run which started better than the others.I was blasting down the back straight when all of a sudden "BANG" the car just ground to a halt. What was that I thought? Corner workers were running everywhere bringing me broken parts. I got out of the car to see the engine and transaxle on the ground. With the parts they were bringing me and by looking at the damage I saw that the flywheel had exploded at 7000rpm. It's unreal the damage a flywheel blow-up can cause. There are large 6" holes in the body at the rear of the car. We were only able to find 1 flywheel part. However we found most of the bell housing.What a mess.The pressure plate is shot as is my fancy light weight starter. It bent the throttle linkage and the oil catch can.I can only hope that the crank is ok.All I had left to do
 to get the engine out was unbolt the cooler lines and fuel line and the the rear mount bolts.(has anyone pulled a Corvair engine on an airport taxi way before?)I spred oil dry on the mess and had some help loading the engine in the Rampside. I strapped the transaxle up with a hold down strap and towed the whole mees home. 
        Looks like it's time to finish that 3.1 engine that has been sitting on the garage floor for 2 years.
                  Paul Fox
  P.S. I did win CP as I was the only car in the class. Man was that an expensive win!

       
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