Got Magnaflux?

[Chris N5CWM]

A friend of mine has a Buick Grand National
race car. It weighs 3400lbs and runs mid 9s
in the quarter mile. The engine puts out an
estimated 700-800HP, out of 4. 1 Liters! Well
he found out what the limits were of a Stage
One Buick 4. 1 liter block. Here are some links
to a couple images for your viewing pleasure!

Cracked block image 1
Cracked block image 2

The crack goes from the front of the block down
the length of the lifter galley, thru most of
the cam bearing and main bearing webbing. The
front timing chain cover/water pump were also
cracked. Three of the MAIN BEARING caps were
fractured as well! The crank looks ok but
it has yet to be inspected by the machine
shop. He just ran a 9 second pass a month
ago near Dallas when the engine shut down and
he could not get it started again. They did
not notice the crack until a couple of days
ago during the teardown of the engine! It
did not "let go/scatter"; though the block
looks like one good tap with a hammer would
finish splitting it in two!

Here are some images of the car and engine
compartment I took a few months ago.

Engine compartment image
Image of the whole GN

They suspect that a problematic high-rpm miss
that they have been trying to diagnose was
the cause of the cracked parts. All that RPM
and boost it's no wonder it did not grenade!

-chris

[This message has been edited by Chris N5CWM (edited 01-26-2001). ]

 

[HEMI®Dart]

Wow! What a mess

Chris, Are the Buick GN engine assemblys still avaliable from the Buick dealer? I was curious #ad


A good analogy I used to descibe the 5. 9L Cummins B series engine to non educated people is compare it too a 1986-88? Buick Gran National V-6 turbo car. #ad
A fair and accurate comparison IMO. #ad


I still have the 1986 issue of Cars Illustrated showing the timing clock at the end of the 1/4 mile after a press pool car had just run. It read 13:95. That was the first car to run that fast in probably 12 years. Everybody went bonkers over it. For good reason




[This message has been edited by HEMI®Dart (edited 01-26-2001). ]

 

['956Wheel]

Chris, #ad
that ain't no cracked block... you got yourself a picture of the San Andreas fualt (earthquake fame) in Calicornhole! #ad
#ad


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9535hundred

 

[illflem]

Chris I would never suspect that rig of being so fast by looking at it from the outside.

My question is,what kind of camera did you use?Those are very high quality pictures.

 

[Chris N5CWM]

The camera is a digital Olympus D-340R, 1. 3
megapixel. I set the camera to save the
images in high-quality JPG, 1024x786 (versus standard 640x480 or Super-high Q 1280x960).
I then use a program called ThumbsPlus http://www.thumbsplus.com/
to resize them to 800x600 (gives them a sharper quality and compresses the filesize for easier emailing, websites etc).

Another good program for digital image
manipulation is ACDSee32. http://www.acdsystems.com/index.htm

-Chris