Show me your Carnage!

Hey gang, with all of my available free time being poured in to the remodel of the larger and more fancier Birdhouse, I haven't been able to even look at my cars, let alone work on them. I'll post house and shop remodel pics if anyone is interested. 

In the meantime, recent stories at work brought back memories of an utterly destroyed a Subaru engine. I bought this engine as a rebuild project / parts donor. It didn't take long to discover something amiss. 

I had bought it as a "running engine with rod knock". The guy had sent me a video of it, but had pulled it before I got there. Rod knock sucks, but the heads and other goodies can typically be saved.

Intake off, nothing very exciting a first. But then...

berkeley. That's no good, time to drop the pan and see how it looks.

Hahaha, Hey Mr Rod! How's it hangin?

"Running motor with rod knock", my berkeleying ass...

Well, let's pull heads, how bad could it be?

Okay then. Very. Very bad. 

I managed to salvage some sensors, the wire harness and, surprisingly, the heads. 

I wish I had been the one driving, I imagine this was a hell of an event. 

Anybody else have carnage to share?

Ripped a wheel bearing in two on my Miata on an autocross run

Not mine but a customer vehicle. High-mileage Acadia with a 3.6L that burned oil. Continually running it low on oil caused the cam phasers to hammer the setscrews out of the back. One caught on the front cam cap and all hell broke loose. It ripped the teeth off the cam gear, the chain knocked a whole in a cam cover, the cam actuator solenoid got broke in half, multiple rocker arms ripped in two 

Inside of the transmission on a customer's Trax with 14k miles. GM overfilled some of the transmissions from the factory, which caused this. Transmission sounded like a buzzsaw when the wheels were turning 

Some noise out of the wheel bearings on this one

In reply to Karacticus :

That's barely noticeable.  This was our first ever front wheel bearing failure on the VW Fox:

That's what it looked like then the flatbed brought the car back.
The remnants were welded in place.

No pictures, but imagine a fairly recent F150 with a very greasy right rear wheel, a horrible vibration, and a pinion flange that looked, shall we say, flaccid.  It is shocking how hot a pinion can get with no oil.

Dangit, I can't find pix of the rod thru the block or the front strut that lifted the shock tower off the framerail. But here are some other small carnages. 

Factory Mazda GpA diff, known far and wide to be unbreakable. Broken real good, Pico stage , Doo Wop rally, '09

"Losing 3rd gear in a 323 GTX trans? Say it isn't so!"

Not very carnage-ey but we did the last half of the last stage of Wild West rally like this... if only it hadn't let go, we'da had the overall win that day. Missed out as it is, by 2 seconds. 

my sons Suzuki SX4 transmission, after a countershaft bearing failed

Got a suspiciously cheap miata roller off CL a few years ago.  Saw an odd bulge on the side of cylinder 3. I thought it was just some gunk buildup, so I picked at it with my finger and....

After pulling the ole gal apart

Streetwiseguy said:

 It is shocking how hot a pinion can get with no oil.

If you're lucky the crown and pinion gears heat up and try to seize and the increased effort required to continue moving forward alerts you that something's wrong.

Don't ask me how I know

I wish I had taken pictures of the first engine I blew on my Turner. Film was too expensive when a new engine needed to be built though. It broke the crankshaft ,on an angle, at the center main bearing. There was nothing useable. Even the distributor, which was hanging from the coil wire, was too damaged to use. Timing chain was pushed forward through the cover. 

This is from one Saturday evening to the next one.

" If you are not prepared to sweep your car up from the back straight now and then, perhaps motot racing isn't for you."

In 2013 my B18C dropped a valve at 8300rpm. Had about 6000kms on a fresh rebuild with forged bottom end. Cracked the sleeve, punch a hole in the piston. Sent a ton of shrapnel back up the intake and down into all other cylinders.

No photos unfortunately but the FA20 from my BRZ had a nice convenient non-OEM vent hole under the intake and most of a piston in the oil pan.

I don't know why I find this thread so satisfying. Birdlady says I'm sick.

I've had plenty of encounters with carnage over the years, but most never got photographed.

This was what I found when I got asked to look at a mates allis chalmers dozer that stopped  running.

At first I thought he'd  gotten lucky, It wasn't  seized solid. A bit of rocking and gentle persuasion and I got it spinning.... except it felt a little tight in one spot. And it had a weird noise in the bottom end when I hit that spot, so dropped the sump expecting a rod issue. I wasn't expecting  to see the crank snapped through the Web! Dozer cranks aren't exactly  flimsy.