Actually 57 Lima bean knows the back story on the car. I bought it off Racing junk.. Had a 547 Lima motor in it, C-6, fabbed 9 inch, ladder bars. It had max ported Ebock heads, a big roller cam, a Victor intake, and a Dominator. I ran it a few times till the damper came apart on a run.. It slammed into the front cover, which broke the timing chain, which wadded up and took a chunk out of the front of the block. On disassembly I found a broken crank as well.. It was a Scat cast crank. Previous owner claimed he did a 10.50 with it, but I was never able to get in the 10s best was 11.1.
I went about rebuilding it with a new block and a forged crank and an SFI damper. Old damper was stock! I put a slightly warmer cam in it and it made 789 horse on R&R's dyno. I made two races with it.. At the Fall Out Drags in Rock Falls Wi. I was up against a 57 Scrub, so I was amped up to crush his ass.. Over revved on the burnout.. On launch I got to 100 ft and it died Looked under the car no oil.. Engine is locked up.. Got a tow back to the pits.. Guy on the ATV says they want to see you at the starting line. i figured a lecture was coming on something I did wrong or bitching about messing up the lane. Instead he hands me a double handful of chunks of metal that were ejected from the headers. Aluminum and steel and cast iron. It was as catastrophic a failure as you can have without blowing a hole in the block or pan.
I pulled the heads and found: a broken combustion chamber on both heads. Two cylinder walls destroyed. One piston completely broken apart and the rod turned into a pretzel. There was damage on both sides of the motor.. My analysis is that it broke spring on the burnout Then dropped a valve and parts got back up into the intake and into the other cylinders, then when the valve head broke off it destroyed the cylinder wall. A Repair job on the heads would have exceeded their value so they became test pieces for Jay to study water jacketing when designing his heads. Car went into deep storage for the last 3 yr. In the mean time I collected a new block and was contemplating what head to buy, and seriously contemplating going FE to get away from these troublesome and obviously weak Lima engines. LOL.. But I have a racing C-6 in the car so thought 1 more time on a 460. About this time I hooked up with Jon Kaase on an Engine Masters effort. Everyone loves the Boss 9 covers so over the course of a year or so I was picking his brain on his Boss 9 kit and in the end I got the friends and family discount and decided to do a 547 Boss engine.. I wont be on the track this year but hopefully the engine will be on the dyno yet this summer.
