Most Odd Part Broken

JEFFRPM

JEFFRPM

Non Sugar Coated
 
1984 class 8 truck air cleaner stud snaps off motor swallows remaining piece of stud grenades perfectly good motor what a day:mad:
 
W

Wild bill

Well-Known Member
 
The crankcase breather grommet got sucked into the valve cover...breather falls off..silt into motor...the rest is obvious.
 
joe1369

joe1369

Well-Known Member
 
Having an axle on a car with midboard hubs that had 4" of spline but was 1/2" to 3/4" to long so on the full compression cycle, the cv would pass through the inside edge of the cv splines and havg up on re-entry to the splines, one broke the cv, thought just a broken cv, 1 race out, then then fixed and prepped for the next race and this time it happened to strip out the spline off the inside of the star. Thats race #2 dnf, that got us looking at the whole set-up and this is what we found. Got 3/4" shorter axles, no issues since.;)
 
MIKEY CHILDRESS

MIKEY CHILDRESS

Iron Mike
 
Most weird for me would have been while riding with Pistol Pete at primm a few years ago...The bolts that hold the pully on end of the crank snapped off leaving is stuck in the middle of the desert and done for the day. Who changes the bolts on the pully as part of there prep?
 
green787

green787

Well-Known Member
 
Battery wire, from the alternator, the brand new crimp connector broke off, due to vibration... TyRapped to the alternator now...!!
 
DSRacing

DSRacing

Mini Metal MOD
 
green787 said:
Battery wire, from the alternator, the brand new crimp connector broke off, due to vibration... TyRapped to the alternator now...!!
Click to expand...
I had a similar problem during our fisrt night race four years ago. The connector for the main positive lead from the battery was only soldered, not crimped. The vibration fractured the solder and allowed the cable to pull away from the connector. We fixed it with duct tape but it costed us so much time we timed out of the race.
 
BANNED4LIFE

BANNED4LIFE

Well-Known Member
 
MIKEY CHILDRESS said:
Most weird for me would have been while riding with Pistol Pete at primm a few years ago...The bolts that hold the pully on end of the crank snapped off leaving is stuck in the middle of the desert and done for the day. Who changes the bolts on the pully as part of there prep?
Click to expand...
how about the tiny coupler between the electric motor and the actual pump part of a high pressure pump fpr the fuel injection.........but it broke at parker at graham well pit and coasted into a pit that had a box van with basically a machine shop in it.......we took the pump apart and MADE a new coupler and finished third.....i swear....2004......almost got second but broke a power steering line late in the race and had to repair that in the field also.......ive had my weird things happen over the years..............
 
RBrown

RBrown

Well-Known Member
 
It seems like more often than not it's a wierd part. {electromotive overheating, pinion broke off, CV Stripped spline, harmonic balancer bolt broke, lead to broken crank, rocker studs, oil pump drive shaft, auto trans pump drive shaft**BAN ME****BAN ME** you can only cover so much with prep (unless you are a megabucks team!)
 
Weatherman

Weatherman

The voice of desert racing
 
At the '04 Vegas To Reno race, my catheter broke and it pizzed me off, but we still won!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was dry by the time Judy Smith interviewed me after Casey shook our hands. I went back to P C I and they gave me a new one. it was a couple of sizes larger and it's still working great.
 
H

harleys dad

Well-Known Member
 
Try the nub on a VW distributor rotor Breaking and everything inside the cap looks normal. And then you don't have one. This is after the motor quits. 98 percent Wont figure out its broke for quite a while, and 99.5 will not figure out how to make it work with out the nub once they finally figure out what happened! And 99.8 percent will not have with them what it takes to make it work nub-less. First time it happened to me was the 1979 Mint 400, 10 super experienced people could not figure out what happened because when you push it down with out the nub it will engage to the shaft with pressure so everybody didn't even think to look inside the rotor because it would engage every single time they tried to see if the shaft had come diss engaged. The timing was off, that was forsure. The pit just happened to have a 1967-B distributor they dropped in and we continued on and won the race! BUT At that time I knew next to 0 about anything to do with the engines and happened to find the problem after we got home! I have had that nub brake 6 times since that first one in 1979, The motor sounds exactly the same everytime it has broke. Now jump ahead a few years to the 1984 Baja 1000, I broke one 100 miles into the race, BUT I had a spare!! and knew exactly by sound what happened. CHANGED the rotor, fired rite up! Went threw Ojos negros on the way to the finish WHapbam BROKE the second rotor with no spare. What to do???, the nub is completely missing and the rotor just spins on the shaft and the lead you just spent all day and night building is going away! I pull a piece of paper(a lot of racers have no paper) and put some inside the rotor and slide the rotor over the shaft that I covered with paper also. Walla, she fires rite up and drive it to the win with paper holding the rotor in place! I know a whole bunch of racers that have failed to finish all because of that little rotor nub, and most did not figure it out until they got home!, and waisted hours trying to figure it out Some had the race in the bag, Until!!! I lost a race at Riverside because of it 2 laps from the end. I dont know why they break, but everytime I have broke one I was hitting a hole hard or bottoming the car. For somebody who has not had it happen it is not easy to figure out unless you have had it happen to you. I have another stupid but race ending thing That really got expensive in the end. The Alternator lite must work for a VW charging system to charge, at least with present day alternators. My friend lost a 1000 because the battery went almost completely dead because of that 10 cent lite (I try and carry a few bulbs) within site of Ensenada, it started to run real bad because the battery was so low, but he thought he was loosing the ignition until the motor melted from no fan belt!! Because of no lite bulb to lite up!!. One weird one for me was breaking the Super Diff in half in the city of Ensenada and loosing the 1000 as we changed the transmission 200 yards from the finish!! because they would not let us push the car across the line!! That one hurt!! We were only a few miles from the finish, in fact all done with the dirt when it went into neutral in all gears IN TOWN! AND got to watch the winner cross the finish as we were putting the wires on. How about loosing the little bitty tiny key way to a alternator pulley after the pulley itself broke! End of race!!. I can think of a lot of race ending things like the end comming off a rocker arm screw, main pulley bolt comming out( Rich Minga class 5) and loosing the main pulley. I had that happen in 5/1600 at Willow Springs and didnt get to practice because of it.
 
Mxrider99

Mxrider99

Well-Known Member
 
harleys dad said:
Try the nub on a VW distributor rotor Breaking and everything inside the cap looks normal. And then you don't have one. This is after the motor quits. 98 percent Wont figure out its broke for quite a while, and 99.5 will not figure out how to make it work with out the nub once they finally figure out what happened! And 99.8 percent will not have with them what it takes to make it work nub-less. First time it happened to me was the 1979 Mint 400, 10 super experienced people could not figure out what happened because when you push it down with out the nub it will engage to the shaft with pressure so everybody didn't even think to look inside the rotor because it would engage every single time they tried to see if the shaft had come diss engaged. The timing was off, that was forsure. The pit just happened to have a 1967-B distributor they dropped in and we continued on and won the race! BUT At that time I knew next to 0 about anything to do with the engines and happened to find the problem after we got home! I have had that nub brake 6 times since that first one in 1979, The motor sounds exactly the same everytime it has broke. Now jump ahead a few years to the 1984 Baja 1000, I broke one 100 miles into the race, BUT I had a spare!! and knew exactly by sound what happened. CHANGED the rotor, fired rite up! Went threw Ojos negros on the way to the finish WHapbam BROKE the second rotor with no spare. What to do???, the nub is completely missing and the rotor just spins on the shaft and the lead you just spent all day and night building is going away! I pull a piece of paper(a lot of racers have no paper) and put some inside the rotor and slide the rotor over the shaft that I covered with paper also. Walla, she fires rite up and drive it to the win with paper holding the rotor in place! I know a whole bunch of racers that have failed to finish all because of that little rotor nub, and most did not figure it out until they got home!, and waisted hours trying to figure it out Some had the race in the bag, Until!!! I lost a race at Riverside because of it 2 laps from the end. I dont know why they break, but everytime I have broke one I was hitting a hole hard or bottoming the car. For somebody who has not had it happen it is not easy to figure out unless you have had it happen to you. I have another stupid but race ending thing That really got expensive in the end. The Alternator lite must work for a VW charging system to charge, at least with present day alternators. My friend lost a 1000 because the battery went almost completely dead because of that 10 cent lite (I try and carry a few bulbs) within site of Ensenada, it started to run real bad because the battery was so low, but he thought he was loosing the ignition until the motor melted from no fan belt!! Because of no lite bulb to lite up!!. One weird one for me was breaking the Super Diff in half in the city of Ensenada and loosing the 1000 as we changed the transmission 200 yards from the finish!! because they would not let us push the car across the line!! That one hurt!! We were only a few miles from the finish, in fact all done with the dirt when it went into neutral in all gears IN TOWN! AND got to watch the winner cross the finish as we were putting the wires on. How about loosing the little bitty tiny key way to a alternator pulley after the pulley itself broke! End of race!!. I can think of a lot of race ending things like the end comming off a rocker arm screw, main pulley bolt comming out( Rich Minga class 5) and loosing the main pulley. I had that happen in 5/1600 at Willow Springs and didnt get to practice because of it.
Click to expand...
Holy balls


All these races were before i was even born! :eek:

Oh, and i read all of that. ahha :D
 
randy s

randy s

Well-Known Member
 
BRINGTHERUCKUS said:
Ive been in a car while prerunning that that happened....
Click to expand...
me too. except we were on the highway on our way to valley t at night from ojos to start our prerun in our 4 seater buggy. 100% driver error. i did'nt snap or click the steering wheel back in enough and it came off at around 65 miles an hour. i had to steer the thing with my hand around the splined shaft until i got it together enough to put the wheel back on. what a hairlip. as soon as i got it back on, a big ass owl flew into the top of the windshield and ended his evening early big time. i was relieved to finally get off the friggin' dangerous pavement. off road where it's safe[er]. what a night.
 
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