Clutch/flywheel explosions...let's hear some stories.

Check out the carnage in the following 2 pics. Don't know if anyone got hurt but I say a scattershield is a good idea if you're running a 4 speed in your street car and plan on racing it sometime. I remember seeing a Fiat altered at in the 70's. As he went to launch it just jumped a little and then I heard a ching, ching, ching as a big chunk of flywheel skipped across the track and smashed into a wooden fence right at the spectators shin level. Not sure how he made it through tech with a less than 360 degree scattershield. I saw a 56 Chevy that looked like the pics, holes through the frame, smashed cowl and dash, broken windshield etc. Once you see that you never forget it.
Imagine putting a grenade under the floor of your car and then sitting there when it goes off.............Have any HAMBers experienced this?

 

HOLY CRAP!!!!

 

What kind if Tranny is that in the 1st pic? With all the hoses and fittings on it...

 

Whatever it was it needed a good scattershield. After checking the caption in the book i scanned they say that is a fuel injection pump laying there and lucky the lines didn't rupture.Not sure what it's doing back there.

 

are cast iron shields safe?

 

Dayum

 

Think I remember some distributor drive injection pumps - I'm thinking they went under the distributor.

Looked at the picture again, you can see the pump drive flange - the pump was at 90 degrees to the distributor, right over the flywheel.

 

Yeah, I see that too now...

Wow, what a mess.

It would be good to know exactly how common these blow ups are.

And which types of Vintage Scattershields are safe enough to use...

 

i was around the drags in kcmo around 55-57 and witness this happen. nobody knew you could spin a flywheel and clutch in a pass car fast enough to blow it up before the small block came out i saw this at night and could not believe the driver walked away. these deals would knock out the brake and fuel lines in the process.i saw a 57 chevy where the gas pedal was taken out right under the guys foot.

 

Not just limited to clutch/flywheel, many automatics have come
apart too with catastrophic results. I had a classmate in with a 56
Chevy in the 70's with a clutch failure. Destroyed his aluminum
bellhousing and exited through the cowl. I had an old(at the time)
scattershield on my 57 Chevy that was fabricated from 1/4"steel,
never tested it tho. I remember seeing a 55 Chevy in a junkyard.
Gutted drag car with evidence of exploded clutch. Also remember
others,(maybe circle track )even junkyard relics with steel plate
somewhat crudely formed and attached to the trans tunnel in the
area of clutch and foot pedals.

 

wow! i've heard of it, but never actually seen it! that's insane to see that you could lose your life to a clutch!
Is this only with high HP situations or can it happen in a normal car?
...i'm blown away, just like that guy's leg!

 

really what hp numbers are we talking to do this ,i am running a muncie behind my 350.i am taking it to the track next weekend i might wanna rethink the idea of building a sheild.thanks for the heads up.

 

My buddy's dad used to race in the 60's. I believe it was at lions Speedway. His friend had a corvette that the clutch and flywheel blew up on. It took both his legs off and killed him.

 

A few real life visions. Back around the early 70s there was a 69 Nova with a 396 with a 4 speed on the street in our town. They had the top 1/2 of a two piece scattershield in the Nova. At a light, the Nova launched hard, for about a foot, then a big bang and stuff came out from under the car as it coasted to the side of the street. I remember digging chunks of flywheel/clutch disc from about 2" deep in the street. Was enough to convince me to put a scattershield on my 4 speed Road Runner.

2nd vision. There is a guy around town missing 1/2 his right foot when the clutch came apart in his 66 GTO (389 4bbl) on the street.

3rd vision. Had a guy bring in a Chalenger to my shop. Was a stroked small block in a mid 10 second drag car. The racing auto trans that was wrapped in a scatter blanked exploded on the line while using the trans brake. The explosion ripped open the floor pan tunnel (about a 4" gap) and distorted the firewall! Remember, this trans was wrapped with a trans scatter blanket! The bell housing was in several pieces and the rest of the trans was in 4 big chunks, all still contained inside the blanket (he had pictures.) When we redid the floor, we installed a lining of 3/16 plate for extra protection, at his request.

Doesn't happen a lot, but if it happens to you, how many times would you like to experence it? Any time I've ever heard of these things happening, the event happened while seviere thrashing was involved. My thought about the whole thing is if your going to push things hard, be prepaired for serious events to happen and build accordingly. Gene

 

Not a clutch,but i was at the local race track(Mission Raceway) to witness an automatic,explode in a small block Dodge Dart.One of the bands managed to become,a straight projectile(looked like it was made as a 18" flat bar not a round band ,up through the case,floor,drivers foot and then the roof!!! Car was not required to have a trans shield since it only ran 13s and didn't have a trans brake.

 

Buddy works at the local Dodge Dealer as a mechanic.....last year a guy towed in a new `06 Viper complaining that it died on him at the gas station.

As soon as they got it up on the lift they determined otherwise.

He was drag racing the car and the flywheel exploded...severing everything behind the motor.The harness,fuel lines,brake lines,bellhousing,firewall,etc,etc.The car was totalled...and his warranty denied.........still looked like a new car on the outside though....lol

 

In this box are the remains of DE SOTO's pressure plate that let go in his 6x2 De Soto Hemi powered sport coupe. Happened in front of his house and shrapnel punctured the enclosed trailer sitting on his neighbors driveway! Check the second pic closely and you can see some of the damage done to the cowl. I'm hoping Rick will get on here and tell us the rest of the story.

 

Thanks guys.... as if I didn't have enough to think about already...

 

The most famous explosion, which ended slingshots. The circled kid evidently lost an arm from the shrapnel, some of which is flying across the other lane.

 

I road raced a 1981 Ford mustang 2.3.
The year we could upgrade to the 5speed T5 we did but the clutch would never work right.
While a race at Brainerd Mn I cam out of turn 10 ( 90 mph right hand turn ) onto the main straight ( 1 mile long ) and my 3- to 4 shift was right in front of the tower. While on the second lap my clutch let go in front of the tower, the noise was so loud the officials in the tower thought something had hit the tower.
When we took the car apart there were clutch fragments between the bellhousing and the engine - thankgoodness the bellhousing and steel plate inside the bell housing contained everything.

We also had a clutch overheat and explode in a tow vechile on the way to Road America seems the beancounter at Ford decided that a 10" clutch would work in a 3/4 ton 460 5speed truck. It let loose with a bang annd again there was clutch fabric between the bellhousing and the engine. After two clutches , I installed a multidisc tractor pul clutch in the truck, that problem solved but then that caused rear seal problems. Isn't racing fun?????

 

YUP, THAT WHAT WAS LEFT OF THE CLUTCH IN MY SPORT COUPE !

Happened right in front of the house, at about 1/2 clutch release i rolled on the gas hard and .... !! BAM !! & a very hard jolt.

Stuck the engine at full throttle, Hit the mag kill switch and the brakes , HOLY SHIT !! No brakes !!!!

Went to turn in the neighbors driveway, SHIT AGAIN !! No steering !

Flung open the door to drag my foot to stop it ( sounded good at the time ) and relized the damn thing was doing about 20mph .... dont sound like alot, but after all that it was HAULING ASS !

Lucky for me, a bunch of guys were in the street playing B~Ball and were able to get the car stopped before i went accross the cross street, over a curb, thru a fence & into a guys front yard.

Wiped everything off the inside of the firewall right from under my foot, smashed the steering box, cut the brake lines & oil gauge line, flying parts bent a wishbone, destroyed the firewall & bent up the cowl some, flywheel, clutch, bell housing & related parts destroyed, and im sure other parts i dont remember.

One real scary part is i never found all the parts for the pressure plate.

Parts hit the neighbors trailer, the front of my '61 Dodge, another guys Nash that was here.

I'll tell ya, this happens REAL FAST !! Dont let it fool you, like 1/1000 of a second fast......

If it were to cut off my foot, I woulda not known till i tried to get out of the car ... puts you in a state of shock for a bit.

 

I was riding in a very nice flathead powered 32 roadster in 1954 when the owner decided he needed to show me how fast he could shift. At around 5500 when he missed the shift the flywheel exploded. We both got shrapnel in the bottoms of our feet but the car body got the worst. It was almost cut in half.
We did save the 59A block later by brazing a new bell housing on it.

 

Is this really true? I never knew that a spectator lost an arm in that famous Garlits clutch explosion. That's terrible. Quite the photo by the way. I've never seen that view before with the shrapnel going through the air.

 

No it would just add to the shrapnel.

We had a flywheel rip lose. The starting area was concrete and the track was asphalt. When we hit the asphalt there was a big explosion. The scattershield held the flywheel but was junk after that. The bolts snaped holding the flywheel. ended up braking the trans and the back of the crank. That happen back in the 70's at Mountain View Drap Strip in Pa.

 

Yes and no.

Anything you can do to absorb energy from the explosion helps. Cast iron breaks easier than a formed modern racing shield, but is still significantly better protection than a stock aluminum bellhousing.

These things still happen. Last year saw pics of a similarly destroyed Z06 corvette that had the flywheel explode with a big shot of nitrous and a missed shift.

 

I have my non-hamb friendly road race car equipped with a lakewood blow proof bellhousing. I installed it after a friend of mine had a clutch let go in his fox body mustang and pieces of the pressure plate went straight up through the cowl of the car. If it went 90 degrees to either side, either him or his passenger would have no legs.

 

A couple of questions.....

I can see how a Cast Iron Flywheel would let go at high RPM, Cast Iron isnt good in Tension, so the centrifugal forces will just tear it apart.

I'm guessing a Aluminum Flywheel would be a lot safer, the material is better in Tension, and being lighter, the forces wouldn't be as high.
Is this a logical way of thinking?

But, when I spoke about this with some Racers, some of them thought it was the Pressure Plates that let go first, most of the time.
and the Flywheel just joins in on the fun...
If so, what could be done about that?

I guess you could go for a Steel ( not Iron ) Flywheel, and a Multi Plate Clutch ( like Tilton ), but are there any Stock replacement Pressure Plates that are made out of a better ( more RPM resistant ) material?

 

Look close and you can see the goldish cad plating on my McLeod
scattershield.

Chev 383 and a Tremec 5sp being worked by a guy who is not too smart
sometimes. I figured it was a smart thing to do, Money well spent even if It never gets tested.

 

Same here...

I've got a cast aluminum scattershield in my '28, a cast iron Ansen in my Capri, and an other cast aluminum one for my '32...

 

You know it's serious when the scattershield (clutch can) is exiting the car with the other parts. Bet this guy's glad he isn't in a front engine dragster!!