Now we need another thread :
"How many transmissions have you broken "?...
I bet the 700R4 will top the list!..
"How many transmissions have you broken "?...
I bet the 700R4 will top the list!..
CK5
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How Many Engines have you Broke?
- Thread starter Bent77
- Start date
Bob, it’s a winner for sure if you start one
I haven't killed any, which does seem odd. I have had upwards of 50 cars and trucks over the years. Some near misses, and non catastrophic problems for sure though. Also a few that blew up shortly after I got rid of them.
My first car was a 65 Buick Wildcat, 2 dr hardtop, 401 nailhead, "switch-pitch" TH400, 3.23's with a posi. If my Dad knew anything at all about cars he wouldn't have let me near it, let alone buy it when I was 14. Anyways, I fixed the stuff I could over time and when I turned 16 I got my license, and two weeks after that had my Wildcat insured and roadworthy.
A pic of the day I got it home. July 1980 on a trailer behind my Dad's 1976 Chevy 3/4 crew cab.
A couple of years later...
Anyways, I loved that car, but I drove it like it owed me money. I can remember wanting to know how fast it'd go, and finding a nice long empty stretch of road in a rural area...and letting er rip. 70, 80, 90, still pulling hard, 100, having fun now, 110 and still pulling, and around 118 mph I look in the mirror and see a ton of whitish 'smoke' behind me. 5600 rpm and the head gasket(s) said see ya!
It still ran, and I never lost a valve or anything catastrophic. I had it fixed a couple of weeks later in auto shop and it was good as new. I eventually sold the car to a friend of a friend after being pestered for months. He had the car two weeks and windowed the block. Nailheads had small valves, but very aggressive cam profiles. In "drive" it would pull to 6200 at WOT. I never bothered manually shifting it 'in anger' if I was racing someone. I guess the dude that bought it figured there was more to be had above 6200 rpm...
My first car was a 65 Buick Wildcat, 2 dr hardtop, 401 nailhead, "switch-pitch" TH400, 3.23's with a posi. If my Dad knew anything at all about cars he wouldn't have let me near it, let alone buy it when I was 14. Anyways, I fixed the stuff I could over time and when I turned 16 I got my license, and two weeks after that had my Wildcat insured and roadworthy.
A pic of the day I got it home. July 1980 on a trailer behind my Dad's 1976 Chevy 3/4 crew cab.
A couple of years later...
Anyways, I loved that car, but I drove it like it owed me money. I can remember wanting to know how fast it'd go, and finding a nice long empty stretch of road in a rural area...and letting er rip. 70, 80, 90, still pulling hard, 100, having fun now, 110 and still pulling, and around 118 mph I look in the mirror and see a ton of whitish 'smoke' behind me. 5600 rpm and the head gasket(s) said see ya!
It still ran, and I never lost a valve or anything catastrophic. I had it fixed a couple of weeks later in auto shop and it was good as new. I eventually sold the car to a friend of a friend after being pestered for months. He had the car two weeks and windowed the block. Nailheads had small valves, but very aggressive cam profiles. In "drive" it would pull to 6200 at WOT. I never bothered manually shifting it 'in anger' if I was racing someone. I guess the dude that bought it figured there was more to be had above 6200 rpm...
Yeah, no 69 Camaro, but still a pretty cool first car I guess. I'm sitting here looking at both pics...and laughing at how I could never seem to find all the trim for that thing. I had it 10 years...
Interior was kinda cool too. Black low back buckets, console shift, factory tach, AM/FM radio with "reverb". It was a fancy car in it's day. Power everything too, including antenna. lol
Interior was kinda cool too. Black low back buckets, console shift, factory tach, AM/FM radio with "reverb". It was a fancy car in it's day. Power everything too, including antenna. lol
wasted wages
1 ton status
Back when I was a teenager,my next door neighbor had a 70's model Grand Prix, beautiful car.. his DD.
He saw me working on my old hot rods and asked me if I could do a complete tune up and oil change for him...sure thing, no problem..
did plugs, wires, cap and rotor, rebuilt the
Q-jet oil change,trans fluid and filter...
When I was done I of course had to take it for a test drive! I was on a back road roasting the rear tires when all of a sudden it fell flat on it's face and shut down. .
I put it in park turned the key and was greeted with the sound of an engine turning over with no compression.. yikes!!
My first thought was thrown timing chain,,
would not be good to have to go get my neighbor with burnout marks all over and a screwed up motor..
I waited a few minutes,,cranked it over again and it fired up with all of the lifters clattering for about a minute and then quieted down...
I drove it back very nicely, parked it in his driveway,, and handed his keys back...
dodged a bullet on that one..
He saw me working on my old hot rods and asked me if I could do a complete tune up and oil change for him...sure thing, no problem..
did plugs, wires, cap and rotor, rebuilt the
Q-jet oil change,trans fluid and filter...
When I was done I of course had to take it for a test drive! I was on a back road roasting the rear tires when all of a sudden it fell flat on it's face and shut down. .
I put it in park turned the key and was greeted with the sound of an engine turning over with no compression.. yikes!!
My first thought was thrown timing chain,,
would not be good to have to go get my neighbor with burnout marks all over and a screwed up motor..
I waited a few minutes,,cranked it over again and it fired up with all of the lifters clattering for about a minute and then quieted down...
I drove it back very nicely, parked it in his driveway,, and handed his keys back...
dodged a bullet on that one..
Those old Buicks were dam good cars...
I loved the '66 Wildcat I had,even if it was a lowly 4 door!..it was about the same dark blue metallic color as yours was too,with a black vinyl roof..interior was mint,it had belonged to a middle aged housewife,she kept it nice.
It had the speaker grille in the middle of the rear seat with an optional reverb unit for the AM radio,it had a speaker up front in the dash too..."Dream On" By Areosmith sounded awesome in that car..
I admit to beating the snot out of both of the 401 Nailheads I had--the other was in a '66 Electra 225 ,2 door hardtop I had before the Wildcat..had them both for over a year ,it was nice having two big land barges that could blow the doors off many "muscle cars" yet still glide down the highway like floating on a cloud..
One of the 401's had a noisy tappet,an old gas station owner showed me what they used to do to silence them--had me remove the valve cover (2 bolts and 3 minutes !),and he pinpointed the noisy one by pressing down on each rocker with it idling--when the culprit was found,he took a nickel out of his pocket ,had me shut it off,and he forced the nickel between the valve stem and rocker arm tip,he said "start it up"--it was silent!..
I never had a lick of trouble with the engine or valves,in either car..
I took the valve cover off and looked at the nickel after I drove the car 2 years and it didn't even look like it had any wear--I had fears it would get eaten up and drop into the springs..
Those nailheads had serious low end torque,my Electra weighed over 3 tons,but it would squawk the tires going into second gear just under 60 mph..they could wind out too,for a big block..I bet the Buicks could have beat my GTO in a stoplight drag race..and that had a 400 with 4:10 gears..
The Electra used to smoke a bit,the Wildcat's engine was much "tighter" and was a bit more powerful..I think the Wildcat had slightly lower gears too,the Electra had 3:08's--both could burn off one rear tire in one burnout,I loved doing 300 foot long ones with both cars..night after night they withstood this type of abuse and it never seemed to phase them...I miss both of those cars a lot!..
wasted wages
1 ton status
yeah,,,the old duce'n'a quarter....my friend had one...the thing was indestructible...
I surprised many many people with that old 'cat. my best kill was a '70 Mustang with a 351 cleveland. What really helped get the car moving was the switch pitch convertor. At WOT the stator pitch "switched" and stall speed jumped to approx 2800 rpm. When I would be out trolling on a Friday night I'd unhook the switch mechanism from the throttle and manually move the switch to the high stall position.
The first engine I broke was in a 1978 Plymouth Arrow. It had a 93 horse power, 2.0 liter 4 banger. It got good gas mileage but developed a serious oil leak. I tried driving it to my In-Laws so I could work on it but the distance was just too much. I had to stop every 3 miles to put oil in it. They were 20 miles away and I didn't have enough extra oil to keep it from locking up. I was only 5 miles away when it threw a rod on the right side of the block......that was the end of the Arrow.
The second engine that broke, and I wasn't responsible for this mishap, was a Pontiac 400, in a 1978 Trans Am. I had it rebuilt by a shop, and at the time of breakage it had 35,000 miles on it. Me and my oldest son, Shane, were headed from Topeka to Lawrence for a softball game. We we cruising about 60 mph when all of a sudden.......BANG. The engine shut off and we pulled over to the side of the road. I thought we threw a rod. We popped the hood and scanned the engine bay. We found that the distributor cap was obliterated into a bunch of pieces. We had no idea what happened and had to have it towed to my house. Later that year I tore into it to see what happened. There is a shelf, with a hole in it for the distributor shaft, that broke off. Once it broke it allowed the shaft to wobble out of place and at the rpms it was producing it shot up and destroyed the cap and bent the shaft into a J. Weirdest thing I ever saw.
The second engine that broke, and I wasn't responsible for this mishap, was a Pontiac 400, in a 1978 Trans Am. I had it rebuilt by a shop, and at the time of breakage it had 35,000 miles on it. Me and my oldest son, Shane, were headed from Topeka to Lawrence for a softball game. We we cruising about 60 mph when all of a sudden.......BANG. The engine shut off and we pulled over to the side of the road. I thought we threw a rod. We popped the hood and scanned the engine bay. We found that the distributor cap was obliterated into a bunch of pieces. We had no idea what happened and had to have it towed to my house. Later that year I tore into it to see what happened. There is a shelf, with a hole in it for the distributor shaft, that broke off. Once it broke it allowed the shaft to wobble out of place and at the rpms it was producing it shot up and destroyed the cap and bent the shaft into a J. Weirdest thing I ever saw.
Considering all the years I’ve been racing cars, I have only broken a couple. And surprisingly NEVER any with Nitrous. But I tend to overbuild engines. I have definitely damaged a couple, but never unreliable.
My current build...
A Merlin Block, 572.
My current build...
A Merlin Block, 572.
