Thanks for all the help out on the Cuota on Thursday!  As it turned out, we broke the crank… errrr, well, I should say, the crank broke us! 

 

  We loaded the El Camino on the trailer Thursday morning after it stopped dead in it’s tracks and headed back to San Diego.  We had another motor in one of John’s trucks so we decided to pull the motor and drop it into the El Camino in an attempt to get the El Camino back together and try to make the start at BoLA.  So, we got back, the guys at the shop had the engine pulled and we began pulling the motor out of the El Camino.  We got it out with little trouble and swapped out the engine components and propane intake system.  Once the block was all built, we popped it into the El Camino and proceeded to get it all back together.  We finished a little after midnight… it started fine and we warmed it up… running great!  Then as the engine was warming up and the cooling system started to pressurize, we popped a geyser to the roof!  I thought we’d just split a hole in the upper radiator hose… oh, were it that easy, no, we actually blew a hole in the intake manifold… CRAP!  So, we decided to pull the intake manifold off and swap it out with the original El Camino motor… crap again, no gaskets… after midnight… hmmmm… So, I pulled the intake manifold off the original (but very broken) El Camino motor, and it came off beautifully, the gaskets were in superb shape… Ever try to reuse intake manifold gaskets, oh, did I mention that the intake manifold was fit to the block, heavily ported;  very small margin on the sealing surface… hmmm… well, it really didn’t work very  well… it leaked!  Go figure. 

     So, now it’s 0530 and we have to make a decision, break down the intake system, go find an early morning parts shop, and then hope of all hope that a new gasket will actually seal a non matched intake manifold… we decided that there would be little or no return.  Still had 15+ hours of driving to get to a point to start the race, day 3, stage 1 or 2… the math just didn’t work out… so we had to throw in the towel.  Bummer, that’s racing!  We still had a great time!  I only feel badly for the folks that were all prepped to drive in such an epic adventure! 

     So, we’ll pull the motor out of the El Camino, and I’ll build a new one… John is all primed to race some of the local races to get it broken in so we’ll be ready for the next Mex 1000.   We already have a brand new forged steel crank for the motor… I just need to pull the top end off the old motor and determine what parts need replacing and we’ll go from there. 

     I’ve included a couple of pics of the damaged crank.  We did have some luck, the engine locked up before the now, two pieces of the crank, got out of sync so we didn’t put any valves through piston tops.  There was quite a bit of shrapnel in the motor as you can imagine so the cam is trashed, the pistons are pretty scuffed up, but the top end is ok.  We’ve come to the determination that the crank had a flaw… it appears that the oiling system was clear, all the bearings had plenty of oil, the only journal that was trashed was the main right next to the failure. 

 That’s the rest of the story… thanks again for all the support and help!