The 'Hall of Shame'

Here you will find an ever growing collection of shameful things I have done to cars and auto parts over the years.

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...

Upper Left : Pumped a pushrod through the stock stamped steel rocker arm on my Big Block Chevy. Too poor for roller Rockers, so had to keep swaping these in and out. This was on my 1969 Chevelle SS396

Upper Right : Speed Shifting my 372" Small Block Chevy powered International Scout II. I was hauling a mattress on top of the car. Not sure that mattered, but needeless to say driveshaft was hanging.

Upper Left and Right : Several broken valve springs. Different days, different bent valves. Note, Steel valves should not turn over 8000 rpm. These were on Canfield SBF heads. 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 heads have Titanium Valves now...

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

I have removed these as I deteremined that due to the thiner 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.

Left Top : Recovered Valve and Valve Seat parts from various cylinders after the tear down.

Right Top : One of the Cylinders with Valve parts. Piston might still be usable with a light Buff.

Left : This is the head with the missing valve. When the valve came loose shrapnel was pumped into all 8 cylinders. No piston or chamber was un-scarred by the damage.

Upper Left : Scared and siezed up oil pump. My guess is that broken valve spring material found its way into the pump causing it to fail.

Upper Right : Big End of the Billet Oliver Connecting Rod. Note the ARP Bolts did NOT fail

Lower Left : Connecting Rod and Crankshaft Soup in the bottom of the oil pan.

Lower Right : More of the severed connecting rods. The engine seized at full till, so everthing was blue heat treated and twisted, melted, or cracked apart... Well except for the ARP rod bolts. Video shows oil pressure loss for about 20 seconds at WOT before the oil pump siezed and broke the pump drive shaft.

Left : 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.

Left : On the return ride with an empty trailer had a clutch problem. This was 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. 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...

Wheels Off the Track

The Above 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.

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!

Check it before you use it

Make sure if you are using an old tube that it smells like Vinegar or it will never cure. I think I had a bad batch or some manufacturing issue, but these tubes have always dried up when they go. I have never had one do the reverse...