Here's the story of my weekend at Barber for the 45th Mustang bash when the engine "let go".
I was giving my daughter a ride in the afternoon run group designated for passengers when I entered the down hill corkscrew and downshifted to third gear, maybe doing 2500 rpms, loud noise from the bottom rear area of the motor, then a little smoke up the shifter boot, smelled like a burning clutch, shifter vibrating side to side what seemed like a foot, maybe more like 6 inches, vibration got worse, noise got louder and I put the car in neutral and killed the engine and coasted to a safe place on the track and waited for the tow truck.....from start to finish maybe 5 to 8 seconds before I killed the motor.......
At first I suspected the clutch and/or trans, but found out later it was the motor....
After thinking about this for a few days, I wondered if when I spun out and went backwards at about 100mph earlier in the day could have hurt the motor...the spin happened sooooo fassstttt I didn't have time to push in the clutch and the car killed right off and I was going sideways and backward with the car in 4th gear for about 5 seconds, I would guess.........
Here are some pics of the results..... The block actually held up great considering it is a 1971 factory 302 block. No block failure, rod/rod bolt failure........
lots of photos in my gallery.......
David
Engine Failure
Threaded Mode
