I was showing off the hot rod to a guy who gets me my best salvage parts deals. One of his workers asked how she sounded so I started her up, let her idle a bit, and reved it to 4500. BAM! :-( From one of the chunks of pressure plate it looks like it has been dieing for a while. This was just the last straw. The bellhousing is done, as is the pressure plate that let go. A big chunk went through the body and caught the speedometer cable, dimmer switch and a wiring harness. Hard to imagine it causing more damage. I hope the flywheel will be OK but I'm going to wait to find out. I'll tear this mess apart next week. On the upside I was only about fifteen miles from home Sure glad this didn't happen while I was in Texas. The bellhousing is going to be the challange. The guy I was showing off for has one but it is on an engine block that's been sitting out forever and is rusted up solid. To get the bell off you need to remove the flywheel which uses nuts that are on the block side. If you can't turn the crank you can't get to the nuts. It's a little Dodge engine but since the block is a hemi I'm afraid he things it's all $$$ Hafta see what he wants for the wole thing, torch out the flywheel, and get the needed bell. Oh, well. I always wanted this to be a race car of sorts. Wish it didn't do all these race car things.
oh man.....and you didn't get hurt at all??? you get the lucky-dog award this week! i've heard and read about shit like that happening but never really seen it. man, that pic really shows what can happen....mike
Musta been revvin it from outside the car... that coulda hurt! Who says Hemi's aren't cantankerous beasts? Jay
Yep, I came out fine. Making HP with OLD parts has a price. The clutch was a rebuilt truck 11" Borg and Beck.I forget what gauge of steel I used for the floorboard but it held. The shrapnel would have hit it at the angled portion so the glancing blow wouldn't have been as bad as the direct impact on the side. It is far enough forword that my feet never were in jeapardy. I think the kid that wanted to hear it about crapped his pants though! :-D
Man, thats some scary shit!! How much more would a scattershield cost? I'm using one in my Roadster ( and I rev it a little higher than 4500 RPM... ) Glad you are OK!
I will do something about a scattershield. At a minimum I'm going to make a shield that goes over the bell, if not replace the bell with something like a lakewood. Not sure I want to re-engineer the clutch linkage arangement with a different style bell. If I can't get a replacement like I have I won't have a choice.
hey kerry, i just looked at that pic again. my monitor is going bad so the pics come out real dark on it. i thought i noticed the teeth from the flywheel above the steering column so i copy/pasted that pic into my photo editor and lightened it up some, jesus man, you can see the bell is blasted right away up there, HOT-DAMN !!!....great pic
Sorry to hear about the car but you were lucky to not get hurt. I'm sure you'll have it fixed soon and you might want to try a wanted ad in the classifieds. Isn't this what blew off half of Don Garlit's foot? Good luck with it hope to see you next year. Jr.
Yeah, the top of the bell ended up in a bunch of little pieces. I'll be back. This gives me the chance to upgrade the clutch some. Wasn't it in the Hot Rod movie with the hemi powered Willys where he said something like " if it breaks with a four barrel rebuild it with two. If it blows up again supercharge it..." I'm trying to think like that.
CHEEZE AND RICE!! I vote for the Lakewood, I have one and at the very least every joker here with a clutch should have some sort of shield or blanket wrapped around the bellhousing.
Geez Kerry . . . serious stuff. Glad to hear you weren't hurt. Sorry to see the coupe off the streets for a while, but I have confidence it'll come back stronger and safer. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~` The only clutch I ever had come unglued on me lost about a third of the disc facing - happily on the pressure plate side so the Schiefer aluminum flywhell wasn't harmed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My favorite clutch coming unglued story is about a 57-58 full on Corvette blowing the clutch on State Street (Santa Barbara's main drag) and taking out store windows. On both sides of the street....
I did that to my old jeep, it took me a week to fish out all the old clutch parts out of the trany....
HOOOOLY SHIT!! You 'bout got fucked up. Looks like you will be lookin for one of those Wilcap adapters and gettin an automatic. You might even drop a few tenths of your 1/4 mile et.... I won't call you a wuss for ditchin the 4 speed. I promise. See you in 9 months. -Abone.
My dad once told me that there was a guy w/ a 55 chevy and when he launched off the line the clutch blew and some parts went straight up through the dash, hit him in the bottom of the head and killed him.
Jesus H. Christ and his brother Bob.............. Your lucky that wasn't a repeat of what Garlits did back in the 70's........ HE lost part of his foot And started the demise of the FRONT engined dragster,all in one accident Your one lucky Son-Of-A-Bitch................
Kerry, probably won't make you feel any better, but check out Jan 05 Hot Rod, just got it today. On page 16 photo #2 taken @ 2nd NHRA Championship Drags in 1956. Clutch explosion took out the bellhousing. Glad you were not hurt!!
I know a guy who had one come apart and left him with 30-some stitches in his foot. '57 Chevy 2x4 283 in a '53, back when the engine was new. Hood, dash, right front fender and windshield wrecked. Opened up the glove box and there was the clutch disk! Whole flywheel left on him. 1963 Hot Rod Year Book is awesome reading on this topic! I won't be able to get a blowproof for my 322 Nailhead, but there's a company out there that makes carbon-fiber shields for automatic transmissions that are NHRA certified. Very low profile, contoured to practically hug the stock bellhousing and body of the trans. I'm going to track them down and see if I can send them my Cragar adapter so they can form one to it. Worth a shot. On that junk-yard Hemi you found: I had the same problem with a 322 Nailhead, and a friend just had the same problem with a 364: Flip that sucker on it's back, pull the oil pan and unscrew all the con rods, and then pull the crank out with the torque converter/trans still attached. A floor jack is a must, as are two big pry bars to get the bellhousing over/past the dowels on the back of the block. It took 6 innings of a Braves game on the radio to get the trans off the 322. And that included scratching the head for a good long time after trying everything else (the 364 was already mostly apart). -Brad
No way am I dumping the four speed! To much fun! I'm going through all the options in my mind but the right one involves modifying a blowproof Mopar bell (like a lakewood)to fit the trans, use a countershaft instead of a fork, and modify for the starter. Of the parts I recovered outide of the bell are a piece of the pressure plate face about four inches long and a mangled spring. Not sure how much made it long distance. I'm hopeing and praying my Weber steel faced aluminum flywheel is OK. Jay, If I had been on that street there defintely would have been broken windows. As for the Garlits thing I'm not playing with nearly that much horsepower. If you have ever seen the picture of that clutch coming apart, it cut his entire car in two. Not that this little bang isn't dangerous, just on a much smaller level than Big Daddy's. Yep, all the carnage of the fifties and early sixties dictated some of NHRA's better safety rules. You are right Brad. Good ideas. Just hafta see if I can build something with a blow proof bell first. So this brings up the question, What type of pressure plate do you all recommend? This one was a rebuilt truck three finger Borg and Beck. Oh, and does anybody have a Mopar blow proof bell taking up space they would sell me cheap?
Glad to see you're ok Kerry. I hate seeing old Poncho sheetmetal perforated tho.. Is your block the extended block? If I remember right, you've got the "late model" 354, flat-block right? Doesn't Hotheads make a steel scattershield to mount a GM 4 speed tranny to that engine? I will light a candle for your flywheel tonight, my brotha.
You've been warned.Scatter shield. Be carefull regarding mods to a blow proof. You can build in a place for it to fail if not done properly. I should talk. I'm running an aluminum bell behind a a smallblock mopar and I wasn't planning to take it above 5500.
Gald to hear you did not get hurt. That was only the clutch, just think what an exploding flywheel would do! I agree that a scattershield or blowproof bellhousing is certainly due for the rebuild.
Back in the day when I was dumb kid I was riding in my pals 40 Ford coupe one night. we were street draging and he missed his shift in to second and blew the cluch. pices went through the floor boards and some how missed us, most of it went out the bottom. It's scattershields for me . Pogo
Damn, I have alwasy heard about that happening but this is one of the first visual aids I've seen. This post just added $325 to the next build, but that's better that calling me Peg-leg.
I do have the later short bell 354. I found a SB Mopar lakewood bell last night on EBAY. The guy didn't list it's application but I know that 's what it is. Fairly reasonable but shipping is going to hurt. It's made of 1/4 steel. The bell bolt pattern is the same as the hemi but there will be plenty of other things to change. I'll bid and we'll see what happens. Hotheads does make a bell for the GM transmissions but I don't have those. I do have the Mopar A833 I'm running and two more just like it. Gonna stick with Mopar for now. Besides, it is fun to build your own and be a bit different. Thanks for the prayers for my flywheel. I was going to make myself wait till next week to tear it down but I don't think I can wait. We'll see what the damage is later this afternoon hopefully.
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