ZWOLF Posted December 27, 2009 Share Posted December 27, 2009 This sucks...but so would loosing your leg(s)! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP3EIHp3AqE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayolives Posted December 27, 2009 Share Posted December 27, 2009 I had a 396/375 66 Chevelle with a similar, heart pounding outcome. I remember my dad's saucer sized eyeballs from his passenger seat. Scary and dangerous games we play and some without protection. Fortunately, I've not heard stories of this happening with a bell housing behind an L6 Datsun but I guess it could happen even at 7K RPM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
znustad Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 WoW, just when I thought i've seen it all. I'm glad he can still count to twenty. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnc Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 I'm always amazing when dumbasses do something stupid (Let's burn the tires off!) and then are surprised when they ♥♥♥♥ up their car. If that was outside my shop I would be so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pissed off and I sure wouldn't want a video posted. Would I ever take my car to those guys? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eddie-G-Force Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 Drag Tracks should show this to the DA spectators that bunch up on both sides of the starting line in the direct path of the clutch grenade. I've seen one Chevelle blow a clutch assemble in person but it happens so fast, and in the low light of night racing, nobody knows the risk. Those of you turning serious rpm's may want to consider added a scatter shield. Does anyone make one to fit a stock 240z? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 Those of you turning serious rpm's may want to consider added a scatter shield. Does anyone make one to fit a stock 240z? Not to my knowledge. The clutch in a stock Z is well forward of the firewall, for what that's worth. One option is to make your own, I did this by cutting 1/8" sheet and bending to fit the tunnel, then welding two together to create a 1/4" thick shield and bolted it to the tunnel on both sides. Another is to get a Kevlar blanket and wrap it around the bell housing. These were originally intended to capture the gears in the transmission, but several people I've talked to say that they would work to catch clutch or flywheel fragments too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(goldfish) Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 I would still worry about it if you hit the clutch hard. Norm makes it sound like his footwell took a large hit. http://www.zcar.com/forums/read/4/2026955/2026955#msg-2026955 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjhines Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 Ive seen clutches let go on road race courses as well. Mis-shifting can do the same thing. A friend grenaded the clutch in his BMW 325i on track from a mis-shift. The engine never over-reved, but the rapid/uneven heating and high RPMs combined to blow the clutch to confetti. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnc Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 The famous BMW 4th to 3rd money shift I bet. Your friend is lucky the clutch went and saved his engine. I was riding with a student who did it on the front straight at Willow Springs in his M3. Engine went boom and we went for a long slide and ended up on the inside of turn 1. Saw two other cars go off the outside of turn 1 after they went through the oil the two big windows in the block left on the track. Track was red flagged for an hour as they cleaned up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony D Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 Yeah, we have to fabricate a scattershield for the land speed car. The plane of rotation of the clutch is NOT 'well forward of the firewall'... Especially if your foot is in it all the way! They will come into the footwell. Norm's photos are proof enough of that fact. We have a fabricated shield to SCTA specifications, it's 1/4" thick, and if you get some strap steel at least 4" wide and are good with a bending jig and a torch you can make one up pretty nicely. Weld some tabs on it and you're set! Suggestion: Install engine to trans and shield outside car. Once it's in there, it's not coming apart individually! We also have to run the fuel lines inside a thick pipe or their own individual scatter guard if we were running a fuel tank in the back of the vehicle. When I was in the military, I had an old beater Sylvia (180SX) that we painted F15 Grey and decaled up like Milspec. including a red 'Plane of Rotation' warning in the appropriate area. I tried to kill that car and couldn't. Sold it off when inspection came due. Bought a 76 Toyota Celica GT Liftback with an 18RG in it. It didn't take 15 minutes of smokin' brodies at the airstrip to kill that car's engine. Hell, that Sylvia corded two sets of tires in one day and never missed a beat! Oh, yeah: "Drifting is the latest new craze..." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 Yeah, we have to fabricate a scattershield for the land speed car. The plane of rotation of the clutch is NOT 'well forward of the firewall'... Especially if your foot is in it all the way! They will come into the footwell. Norm's photos are proof enough of that fact. Go look again. I know that it's a 2x4 plus some distance from the back of the head to the firewall, because I used to use a 2x4 to keep the engine from tilting back when changing clutches. I'd guess 4.5 to 5 inches clearance there. The flywheel is not 4.5 to 5 inches deep, nor is the footwell deeper than the upper part of the firewall. The flywheel and clutch assembly is ENTIRELY in front of the firewall. Does that mean that your feet aren't in danger? No, and that's why I went to the trouble of making a scattershield for my car. Parts can explode down, hit the ground and BOUNCE up into the footwell. The centrifugal force on the flywheel and clutch is going to make it explode basically radially outward, assuming the flywheel hasn't come loose. I think the fact that Norm's 20 gauge sheetmetal floorpan was dented and had small individual holes but was not shredded is evidence of that fact. Here I'll save you the trouble of going and looking: http://www.classiczcars.com/photopost/data/500/re_0015.JPG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
proxlamus© Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 I would still worry about it if you hit the clutch hard. Norm makes it sound like his footwell took a large hit. http://www.zcar.com/forums/read/4/2026955/2026955#msg-2026955 I couldnt understand a word Norm was saying in the video.. strange man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
z-ya Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Ive seen clutches let go on road race courses as well. Mis-shifting can do the same thing. A friend grenaded the clutch in his BMW 325i on track from a mis-shift. The engine never over-reved, but the rapid/uneven heating and high RPMs combined to blow the clutch to confetti. Exactly. Dan Baldwin has done this at least twice (that I know of). Going from 2nd to 1st at 7000RPM will do it every time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 A friend of mine did that 2nd to 1st shift in her 240Z and took all the friction material off the clutch disk (didn't explode the pp or anything, just took the disk out), but more interestingly she also popped a hole in the water jacket and coolant poured out of the head. She ended up with a new motor and clutch as a result. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
260DET Posted January 1, 2010 Share Posted January 1, 2010 There was a clutch blowup mentioned with pics on z31.com a while ago. Everything was smashed,the gearbox bell housing, back of the motor, very scary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Juday Posted January 1, 2010 Share Posted January 1, 2010 That's freighting to watch. A good reminder of the dangers of high performance cars. Even going two miles an hour you could lose a foot or worse in an "accident". I had a somewhat similar story this last year. A few years back I sold my wife’s Suburban to a friend. He daily drives it and has taken it back to Texas a few times (from California). He doesn't race it but he's not easy on it either. This last summer he was staying with us for a few days before heading back to Dallas. I rode with him in the Sub on some errand and noticed a vibration that it didn’t have when we owned it. When I asked about it he said it started about a year ago after he heard a bang under the floor while on the freeway at about 80mph. He figured something came up off the road and wacked something but he had been too busy to investigate farther. And, anyways, the vibration was not that bad. More like a gentle lope than a shake. After a few days of thinking about this it bothered me. I climbed under the truck one afternoon to investigate myself. In the dust cover bolted to the bottom of the automatic tranny’s bellhousing I found a nice slit that looked like it was cut with an axe. It was about three to four inches long and about an eighth or an inch wide. I grabbed Mark and we pulled the cover off to investigate farther. With him rotating the motor from the front and me poking around with a flash light I discovered a chunk of the flex plate, almost as big as a CD, was missing! Ramps, floor jacks, tools everywhere, and about two hours later we had the tranny out and the torque converter unbolted. The next site I almost couldn't believe. The center section of the flex plate had completely broken free of the outer section and had re-indexed itself about 15-20 degrees and then re-wedged itself back together (with the aforementioned chunk completely gone). What was mind boggling was that he had driven this truck over 15,000 mile in this condition. After we secured a new flex plate and re-assembled the vehicle we examined the magical flex plate more closely. Wondering how close to complete failure it had come we tried to separate the two pieces. We could not, with our hands, with wrenches, with hammers. It now hangs on the wall of his garage in Dallas... as a spare in case its replacement breaks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Infidel Posted January 2, 2010 Share Posted January 2, 2010 The famous BMW 4th to 3rd money shift I bet. Your friend is lucky the clutch went and saved his engine. Indeed. I have several friends that are BMW enthusiasts, and one of them has bent the valves on his M motor 3 times now with his poor shifting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bleakdragonmage Posted January 2, 2010 Share Posted January 2, 2010 There was a clutch blowup mentioned with pics on z31.com a while ago. Everything was smashed,the gearbox bell housing, back of the motor, very scary. they were just talking about that on z31performance a little while ago actually. http://www.redz31.net/pages/flywheel.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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