Matt Brannon - Midwest Bayless
Mad.Matt
So we had a pretty spectacular failure this weekend at Mid-Ohio, with Marnie behind the wheel of the red car.
At the last event the aluminum hub on our Tilton clutch set-up was lost, and were forced to swap in a stock flywheel and clutch set-up to get her through the weekend. A stock clutch will do just fine, but a stock flywheel is pretty heavy for 8,000 RPM work.
We returned to Mid-Ohio this weekend with that stock flywheel set-up,
knowing it wasn't optimal but assuming that we'd make it through the event. Nope.
After a couple of offs, and a slam on the brakes 60-0 dead stop effort to avoid a car on track, a few laps later the stock flywheel decided to escape on a hard 5th to 3rd downshift.
The carnage was just that. Carnage.
All 6 bolts were sheared on the crank, along with the crank alignment dowel. The input shaft of the trans is sheared clean at the flange. Bell-housing in 20 pieces, starter wiped, and worst of all, it broke the forward mounting ear on the block.
A number of factors contributed to this, including as stated above, several harsh stops of the engine which likely compromised the bolts, and repeated hard downshifting without heel-toe rev matching....
Racers, let this be a lesson. You really need to use lightened rotating mass components, and learn how to rev match on downshifts!
-M
At the last event the aluminum hub on our Tilton clutch set-up was lost, and were forced to swap in a stock flywheel and clutch set-up to get her through the weekend. A stock clutch will do just fine, but a stock flywheel is pretty heavy for 8,000 RPM work.
We returned to Mid-Ohio this weekend with that stock flywheel set-up,
knowing it wasn't optimal but assuming that we'd make it through the event. Nope.
After a couple of offs, and a slam on the brakes 60-0 dead stop effort to avoid a car on track, a few laps later the stock flywheel decided to escape on a hard 5th to 3rd downshift.
The carnage was just that. Carnage.
All 6 bolts were sheared on the crank, along with the crank alignment dowel. The input shaft of the trans is sheared clean at the flange. Bell-housing in 20 pieces, starter wiped, and worst of all, it broke the forward mounting ear on the block.
A number of factors contributed to this, including as stated above, several harsh stops of the engine which likely compromised the bolts, and repeated hard downshifting without heel-toe rev matching....
Racers, let this be a lesson. You really need to use lightened rotating mass components, and learn how to rev match on downshifts!
-M