We love chassis dynos but we also fear them to some degree. Obviously we have run our projects on the dyno with varying levels of success, some destruction, and the constant thought in the back of our mind of, “Man, I hope this thing doesn’t completely eat itself up.” This video shows just that, a violent and catastrophic tire failure on the front end of a pretty gnarly looking FWD drag race car. We’ve watched the video a bunch to see if we could determine what caused the tire to fail, but we can’t come up with a definitive answer. Does it touch something when “grown” fully at speed? Does something fail on the car and cut it down in an instant? Who knows.
The one thing this video does an awesome job of illustrating is why you always need to give the vehicle on the dyno respect and maintain a safe distance. Trust us, when Buford barfed the driveshaft across the shop at 125mph a year or two ago, it was our wake up call to make sure we were clear of any potential hazards before the hammer was dropped on the rollers. If someone had been standing directly in front of this car who knows how chewed up they could have gotten from flying chunks of tire and other debris.
The failure comes right at :10 into the video. There is a miniscule “hitch” before the crap hits the fan. Maybe that was the motor throwing parts out into the tire? It is interesting how the other tire immediately goes dink-toed and the the inertia of the dyno rollers chews the thing up, filling the place with smoke almost instantly. This is a perfect illustration of just how quickly things can go from OK to complete and utter dookie-show. Be careful out there, kids!
PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE INSTANT VIOLENCE FROM A TIRE FAILURE ON THE DYNO ROLLERS –
somebody put the body on that car backwards… The hood goes over the skinnies! Hope this helps.
Er….what video?
Next time, we gonna use the GOOD c/v joints.
Right before it all goes south it looks like the wheels toe out,then blammo…..
Half shaft broke? took out tie rod end?
That’s why you put the power to the rear wheels!
You just cannot trust a front wheel drive car. Can you imagine gettin whipped by a tire coming apart?
video quit too soon
They still have those cars around?
Just before the whole import thing imploded there were two of those FWD racers at SEMA that looked like that, inline mounted engine far ahead of the wheels, One with a Lenco, the other had a Liberty 5 speed mounted a couple feet back from the bellhousing and a transfer case/Vdrive behind that with a driveshaft running back past the tranny to a backwards mounted 9″ rear end on a 4 link. Really some interesting engineering in there and the CV joints were one ton 4×4 front end stuff.