Here you will find an ever growing collection of shameful things I have done to cars and auto parts over the years. Some were not really my fault…

I started cleaning up some of the parts in the garage and came across some of the examples of what happens when a part gets blown out. This can happen for various reasons, poor manufacturing, poor judgement, bad shifting, etc. Below is a small gallery. I’m sure I’ll add more as time going on. The Cars I had ranged from my current vehicles to my first car, a Chevy Chevelle SS396, to a Dana 44 pinion that I twisted off in my Chevy Powered International Scout II. This is by no means an exhaustive representation, just what I could take pictures of. Enjoy and learn from the best…

Image Gallery Below

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BBC Rocker Arm

This was an example of a stamped steel rocker arm on my 427 Chevelle engine. It was a pretty healthy motor, but having no money for roller rockers I was stuck with stamped steel. I Pumped a pushrods regularly through the stock stamped steel rocker arm on my Big Block Chevy. I had to keep swaping these in and out. This was on my 1969 Chevelle SS396 

IH Scout Broken Pinion

My 372″ Small Block Chevy powered International Scout II was pretty reliable but every now and then… This was the case when I was hauling a mattress on top of the car, and pulled a heavy duty speed shift.  Not the best thing to be doing on a truck, needless to say driveshaft was hanging.

Broken Valve Springs

Several broken valve springs. Different days, different bent valves. Note, Steel valves should not turn over 8000 rpm. These were on Canfield SBF heads that were on The Ripper. Don’t remember who made the springs but will be sticking with ISKY Gold Tool Room Springs, no fails with them as yet, but that’s to be qualified as  heads now have Titanium Valves.

Broken Shaft Rocker

These were from a set of shaft rockers that when the heads were disassembled showed some signs of ware. Note that while on the head they were still operating OK.

I have removed these as I determined that due to the thinner shaft and the bored holes they all will be prone to this problem. These are not Jessel or T&D machine shafts, but one that someone had made. Can’t really say anything bad as they survived lots of bent valves and other valvetrain mishaps due to over-revving.

Broken Valves

You can see one of the recovered valves and valve Seat parts from various cylinders after the tear down.

The parts sprayed into other cylinders as well. Canfield cylinder head and Ross piston got the shrapnel from the destroyed valve.

The head was score up in all 8 cylinders as well.

 This is where I learned that a careless downshift is a bad thing as no rev-limiter to stop the mistake. Slowly learning this…

Seized Oil Pump

But wait there’s more… much more.

This disaster was a run where parts of the broken valve spring got into the oil pump. It subsequently seized and snapped the pump drive shaft and the stripped the bronze gear on the distributor. That left the engine without oil pressure. The video indicates the idiot driver (Me) didn’t notice the gauge while HAMMERING it into the long straight at Willow Springs. 

Crankshaft Blue, Rods twisted up and broken, some block damage, and a mess to clean up. This prompted the addition of a large RED light on the dash to indicate a problem with oil pressure.

One interesting thing is that NONE of the ARP bolts were broken on any of the mangled rods. Must mean that I have too large of a rod bolt…

ARP Oil Pump Drive Shaft

The ARP Small Block Ford oil pump drive is a very strong part, however when the pump seized at 7200 rpm or so, something had to give, either the drive or the distributor gear. The hex portion of the shaft was the loser.

To be clear this part failed AFTER the oil pump had seized and it not a problem with the part, just all the crap that got sucked up into the oil pump cause the fail.

Ford F350 Blown Clutch

On the way back from Las Vegas before the start of SEMA 2012. I was dropping off the ‘Craftsman Restoration Roll Out’ 1965 Mustang. Lucky it happened on the way back with an empty trailer. The 2000 Ford F350 is tough, but seems the clutches are not. Failed and I had to drive from Baker to Burbank without a clutch. Was sure it was the clutch slave but clutch was jammed up tight.

 Off Roading

The sequence of pictures are at the 2012 Shelby Club Big Bore Bash. During the event the Los Angeles Shelby Club gets to run the track during the breaks. Well on cold tires (yeah, that’s it) came around turn 1 at the Big Track at Willow and lit up the rears a bit. Car snapped around and promptly ejects you off the track.

Track ghosts toss in a couple of buckets of dirt so you see nothing as you MASH the bakes and get ready for the impact. Well no impact except airborne enough to catch a ditch and tear off the passenger front tire. Breaking the center out of the rim. Cracked the Wilwood break hat and broke the Coleman rotor.

Don’t know how the photographer caught that shot but almost make up for the off road excursion. Had to drive home and back to pick up some spare parts only to find that I didn’t have a spare rotor since my stash of rotors were Wilwood and a bit different sized. Worse part of the off roading was the serious amount of dust and dirt that filled the car and engine compartment.

Car ‘111’ gets airborne… Nice numbers buddy.

Home Made Engine Stand

OK, who else can admit to doing this? I’m not too proud to say that the tire based engine stand has been used a number of times. This technique is not recommended for the beginner as it takes a certin amount of skill to get the configuration just right.

After all the brackets, clutch and related are fitted to the motor it’s a pain to remove it for a ‘real’ engine cradle. Note I did leave it on the chains while resting on the Tire Stand…

Ford 390 FE Leak Repair

My pal came over with his Ford 390 FE and our task was to fix a leaking rear seal on the intake manifold. Piece of cake… The job was pretty easy except dealing with the 80 pound iron intake manifold. The shop manual says use an hoist to remove/install, we didn’t so it was painful.

The big problem is after we put it together with a generous silicon bead of Permatex Ultra Copper that I had in the tool box (all others open Permatex had dried up) we though we were good. The next day as we finished putting it all back together we noticed that the silicone had not dried at all. WTF, seem that this was a bad batch of sealer. It didn’t have the tell-tale Vinegar smell so something was wrong.

Had to pull the entire assembly off, clean and redo. Was a lot of fun.

So the learning from this was if it doesn’t smell like vinegar it’s not good.

ASE Certified Mechanic My A$$

Had the 1996 Ford Explorer fixed at a mechanic as I was too busy to work on it this time around. They had a check list of about $1000+ worth of things wrong with it and the guy seemed like a former service writer for a ‘Ford Steelership’. Seemed like he could figure out that the car wasn’t worth that on a good day. Ended up having him swap out the wires and plugs as it was missing a bit. He mentioned on these high mileage cars he likes to use a hotter plug… Well, I guess he likes to use what ever he has on the shelf that is hotter, and these were (as I recall) 3 ranges hotter. Well a couple of months later this is what I pulled out as the engine was running rough. Picked up some stock heat range plugs at Autozone and did the deed. Pain in the a$$ to change some of them even though it was a small V6 under the hood. With stock heat range plugs, car has been driven about 6 more months without a miss or problem. At least this wasn’t my bright idea!