Do Engine blow's at hot rod shows bug anyone else??

[JRM]

While working at a local hot rod show a early 90's chev corsica that was in overall good shape and running well pulled up to the corrner near my location. They drained the cooland but left the oil and set it up for the blow. Hundreds of people placed bets! Am I the only one that isnt a fan of this? I have a few friends who drive and realy on worse cars every day....what a waste! :rolleyes: Anyways, Here are the details as it didnt die easly.
Engine started and rocketed to the fuel cut instantly, withen a few seconds catolitic converter smell became strong.
1-2 min: Entire exahust system began to glow red!
4 minutes: Chunks of multant catolitic converter began to come out of the pipe and one chunk stuck to some dudes leg and burned the *** out of him.
5 minutes: the hot exahust cought the bottom of the floor board on fire and fire dep. foamed inside of car.
5.5 min: Exahust system fell to ground and started melting a hole in the pavement and blew catolitic and pavement onto hottub display behing car.
6 min: Engine fell below fuel cut and pinging was very loud.
6.5 min: nasty burnt oil smell overcame area
7 min: smoke seen from oil fill cap area
7.25 min: Oil cap begins to melt along with paint on engine burns up and engine lowers in speed even more.
7.5 min: Oil cap flys off and oil spray comes out of vavlve cover. Engine sounds very tight :eek: and pinging turns into valve float and other non-native sounds emit.
8 min: Engine lowers to just above idle, all paint on engine is burned off and entire exahust system is fallen to ground but still glowing red.
8.5 min: Engine lowers to below idle then suddenly shuts off (never sized) just like somone turned the key off!

Do pistions melt? I thought they could stand 2k degrees easily? what usally fails first? Im sure not a thing on the engine is anywhere near in speck, heck even the starter is probley warped!

[ 08-12-2003, 12:10 AM: Message edited by: JRM ]

[CleviteKid]

Aluminum pistons will melt at just over 1000 F, being an alloy of aluminum and silicon.

This engine probably did suffer piston seizure, as the thermal expansion coefficient of aluminum is almost three times that of cast iron (assuming the block in this victim was iron). As the pistons swell up and create more and more friction, eventually they just grab the cylinder walls and stop the engine, no muss, no fuss.

For more excitement they should have left the coolant in and drained the lube oil. More likely so see a rod come through the side of the block that way. I did this on a dynamometer on purpose while I was working at Clevite - with a small block Chevy gas engine at full throttle at 4000 rpm. It ran surprising long at full throttle with no oil, over three minutes as I recall, but the shutdown was spectacular.

Dr. Lee :cool:

[hoot]

I think it's great to see engines blow up. I remember working at a gas station many many years ago and a small foreign car pulled in knocking and smoking. We lifted the hood and low and behold.. we were watching the crank and rods turning through a gaping hole in the block.

Fascinating to say the least!

[kbrowns]

JRM,

I help put on a car show every June and the engine blow is one of the favorite events for spectators. The "rap-off/mellow pipes" contest being the favorite. People just seem to like it for whatever reason. We usually use a barely running foreign car, can pick them up cheap and then when we're done we put coolant back in and most of the time they fire up and then sell the car. All the money goes to charity and the charity doesn't have to deal with the vehicle itself(they love that part).