Bad day at the drags

[blacksheep-1]

My buddy's drag car, Ford 9inch, Strange aluminum center section, cut in half by a wayward ring gear.. lol

 

[TMSBOSS]

Ouch
How is the housing and axels?

 

[navseng]

I wonder if the case failed first?

 

[xr7]

I wonder if the case failed first?

I'm guessing the gears caused the case failure, you can see the pinion gear teeth are shelled off which would cause the ring gear to climb over the messed up pinion teeth, causing a big jump in side thrust and there goes the housing. Kind of goes with the chewed up teeth at 3 0'clock on the ring gear. Did it fail at the starting line? Sudden massive torque load and pop!

 

[PatrickStapler]

Happened to us in Champcar at Hallett this year. I was driving…of course. Went through the bus stop, into the chicane, up shifted to third to go up the hill…boom. Ring gear bolts back out. Previous driver said he kept hearing a slight thump going into fourth on the front stretch…..

Guess who got to pull the axles and third member…

 

[blacksheep-1]

From what I understand after this debacle, is that after 30 or so runs, you need to reshim the pinion, something like the impact of the start basically grinds away the shim thickness (or so I'm told, not sure I'm buying that) and in a drag car pinion "slap" is death and causes a cascading event such as this.

 

[navseng]

From what I understand after this debacle, is that after 30 or so runs, you need to reshim the pinion, something like the impact of the start basically grinds away the shim thickness (or so I'm told, not sure I'm buying that) and in a drag car pinion "slap" is death and causes a cascading event such as this.

Yeah I don't buy that lol.. Drag gears are usually a different material (9310 I believe vs 8620) to absorb shock loading so they are softer. If you are having to re shim, I would imagine you are chewing up the gear set.. I've seen them blow the pinion support out but that's a pretty good explosion there.