<VV> Autocross report (BIG BLOW-UP)

[Tony Underwood]

At 07:32 PM 5/21/2007, Robert Marlow, Vairtec Corporation wrote:
>At 09:05 AM 5/21/2007, Paul Fox wrote:
>
>>You hear stoies about flywheel blow-ups Now I know why you need a 
>>scatter sheild in a front engined car.
>
>Bruce Carlton blowed his up real good on the superspeedway at Pocono 
>last year.  Just tore the back of the car apart!  We never did find 
>all the pieces (there were many) and I figured they burned up on re-entry.



At B&R Autoparts Inc here in town, there used to be a pressure plate 
ring on display at the counter.   It was just the section that was 
attached to the flywheel with the bolts with the clutch cover peeled 
back like a wildflower bloom.    It came off a Roadrunner, 383 with 
some tricks, engine revved well, was street racing somewhere and the 
clutch blew apart at high rpm.    The flywheel was steel and held 
together no problem but the pressure plate blew up and almost cut the 
car into two pieces.    It tore up the trans tunnel where it attached 
to the firewall and broke the dash in half, took out the windshield 
and part of the firewall along with a piece of the driver's 
foot.   This, after cutting up the steel bellhousing.     An 
exploding clutch is nasty, nearly totalled the Roadrunner and this 
was when a '70 Roadrunner was still in warranty.

I always remembered every detail... only street car I ever saw that 
blew up a clutch like that.    Made me shiver and count my toes each 
time I thought about it, for years.     Makes me ponder the fact that 
there's no scattershield available for a 'Vair engine.      Maybe 
there should be...

The interesting part is that for a long time, the best place to buy 
yourself a blastcan was from an outfit called...   (wait for it)

...Lakewood.



tony..