Thought I blew my engine today!

[2VNTG68S]

Brand new 445 stroker built by BarryR @ Survival.  Came down an off-ramp, stepped into 3rd and BANG!  Massive backfire.

Thought the motor was toast.

Found the back of the distributor cap blown off and the rotor hanging off sideways.  Not sure if anyone else is running the FAST Dual-Sync but I would check the screws on the rotor regularly (new addition to my pre-flight checklist).

[plovett]

The same thing happened to me about 10 years ago.  I pulled onto a main street, got up to about 30 mph and bang, the engine shut off.  I pulled over and eventually found that the rotor had come off and broken.  My cap wasn't blown out like yours.   I remember I had a Blue Streak cap and rotor at the time.  Now I have MSD parts and no problems.

I'm glad it wasn't anything major,

paulie

edit:  maybe a tiny dab of loc-tite on the screws would be a good idea?

[2VNTG68S]

Yeah, it was one of the screws on the rotor.  Brand new FAST dual-sync. Didn’t think to check it. Will definitely be putting some loctite on.

[Barry_R]

Had that happen on the dyno once.  Really gest your attention when the distributor "jumps up" at 7000 RPM...

I've seen loose rotor screws on other stuff - seems to happen after they run for a while.  Heat getting to the plastic??

[Drew Pojedinec]

Heard that loud "pop" a lil while back.
One of the flyweights in my distributor let loose and created havoc, eventually stripping the splines that hold the top end to the bottom end.

[Falcon67]

Got a broken MSD distributor missing some reluctor teeth.  Mustang ran way off dial, kinda had a shake to it.  One of the rotor screws backed out and lunched the reluctor.  Here's an big LOL - when she came back from the pass, I put a timing light on it it was dead on 38.  Took a while to see the issue because it didn't break #1.  Oh, and the screw that backed out still had Locktite on the threads.  Dammit!

[2VNTG68S]

Guessing it started working loose on the Chassis dyno pulls I just did.  Surprised it didn't pop then...

[Lowrider]

Saw that a few times on those old 3x2 348 Chevys. Gas fumes would accumulate near the distributor then there would be the huge bang. We were just kids then and didn't worry about things like small fuel leaks. Always good for a laugh.