Blown engine

[Legends16]

 

      Hello everyone. I am new to legend car racing and this forum. Ive been racing karts previously for 11 years and decided to make the jump to these cool machines. So I went out and purchased a used car, a 34 Ford sedan with a 1200 open motor.

     The first practice day went alright. Twards the end of the day I had shifting issues. We found there was some issues with the linkage, a bent snapring and washer on the shaft entering the tranny. Fixed that and I was ready to run my first race on the 1.6 mile road course at New Hampshire Motor speedway last weekend.

     I found that in the second practice of the event before the race the motor had charged its tone. This happened right after I hit the rev limiter on the front straightaway. It was louder and just sounded different. Ive got an oil pressure and oil temp gauge in the car. They acted up to. Both gauges would drop out completely and I also found that the neutral light also stoped working. Some of the wiring on this car is a little messy with connectors from the previous owner, I fully plan on cleaning this up. Anyway. We checked the header bolts and tightened them up almost a turn and figured this was the noise issue. I checked the oil level and all was fine. Started up the car and the gauges cam back and everything sounded ok.

     We lined up for the feature and pulled out onto the track. As soon as I did I realized the motor did not have the same tine but was running ok. Oil pressure and temp gauges were fine. Halfway through the race both gauges dropped out. The tach worked fine and I payed very close attension to the oil pressure light on the dash.  If that came on I was stopping.  I kept thinking to myself  If I had burned a plug or a wire, the motor towards the end seemed like it was running only only 3 cyclinders before poof! It blew up. It seems as though I may have broken a connecting rod. The left rear motor mount on the engine had broken off the block. Oddly, the motor starts up and runs, painfuly...

     Ive got someone selling me a used motor, Im just trying to wrap my head around what happened. Do I have two issues? Electrical and Engine. Any thoughts or opinions welcome. This has been a horrible start to my legend car career.

    Thanks,

Eric Williams

[Legends16]

Oh and I forgot to add. The motor had about 20 races on it since its rebuild and its been well cared for.

[VMS Motorsports]

What ignition are you running?
I have heard of problems with the red box when hitting the rev limiter.
Definately sounds like 2 problems.

[Legends16]

Im running the black ignition boxes.

[Legends16]

Is there a way of checking the ignition without running it?

[Legends16]

What components could I ohm out and what should I expect to see. Where can I get info on this? Thanks guys.

[Legends57x]

As taken from the Dynatek User Guide:

Measure the resistance from one spark plug tower to the other.  Factory coils should read in the range of 9600 to 14,000 ohms.   Also measure spark plug caps.  These should read between 7500 to 14,400 ohms.

*IMPORTANT* The ignition coils used with this system(Dynatek) MUST have a primary resistance of at least 2.2 ohms or damge to the ignition will result.  Coils with a resistance  of greater than 3.5 ohms are safe to use, but spark energy will be diminished slightly.

Hope this helps!  

[Legends16]

Thanks so much everyone!