If I remembered stuff about drag racing cars like I remembered stuff about important elements of my life, I would be sitting pretty. Sadly, I can remember drag race cars and moments like they happened 15-second ago but often forget to do stuff like lock the doors, unload the clean dishes, and relieve myself AFTER getting out of bed….but I digress. The reason that I am laughing about my memory is because the second I saw the car which stars in this video my eyes bugged out. This little Valiant is owned and operated by a dude named Marcel Poulin, who was a pretty regular racer at New England Dragway several years ago. The car is very quick and it was always fun to watch heading down the track. If memory serves correct, Marcel once put this car into the sand trap at New England Dragway after suffering an issue with the brakes. He went into the trap at a very high rate of speed and nearly cleared the whole thing!
In this video, filmed at the drag strip at Pont-Rouge, Quebec, Canada Poulin blows up a transmission and the aftermath is incredible. At first you just see the car leave the link and lurch to a stop, but then the camera man gets close and the situation starts to become clear. You can see the parts and pieces on the track and it only gets worse the closer he gets. The transmission, in two piece is hanging under the car and bleeding all over the place, but the most stunning part of the video comes from inside the car where the sheet metal floors have been cut to ribbons and shrapnel flew through the cockpit like bullets. This is by far the worst transmission failure I have ever seen on a sportsman bracket car. I’d go on but the video is so incredible you need to WATCH IT NOW!
Link isn’t displaying right, but is definitely worth copying and pasting.
Never seen a transmission failure smash the dashboard like that. That’s pretty scary stuff. Has me wondering if there’s a SFI approved scatter shield for the slant six version of the A904.
Car is running S/P and has a chute, I don’t think it’s a slant six
That was for my work in progress. A 225 with a lot of boost. Not sure how well the 904 will hold up, and I’d like to be prepared.
Wow that is a bad day at the office. Glad he was walking when he got out. Nice looking Mopar too.
HOLY SH*T!
That ain’t gonna buff out…
Daaaaaayum. Dudes lucky that he still has both feet, especially how it looks like the gas pedal was hit by shrapnel.
SCARY STUFF
Lucky he had the holy Madonna up on the dash riding with him – that’s what saved him. LOL
How all that destruction missing him, he should play the lottery!
JW ultra bell ? seen another dodge tranny do that in a 71 dart broke the guys foot
You can see the driver shaking his right foot around, bet it hurt the next day.
Ya might be a redneck if……..yerflywheelgoesthruyerwindsheild!
I’ve seen/witnessed similar, yet worse, damage before.
I guy I once knew, he was a “Chef” at a Horn & Horn Cafeteria chain.
“Visualize” THIS:
While he was driving, at the “hit” and I’ll quote:
“the dash board literally exploded/disapeared/vanished right in front of my face”.
Afterwards, he admitted to recalling that: “I FORGOT to tighten or torque the flywheel bolts! Duh”!
Humble and stupid…what a catch! Really, he was a nice fellow though!
The flywheel, torque converter AND dashboard went strait up, through the windsheild! The flywheel/TC landed in front of the starting official and separated into two peices….at Crapitol Raceway, Crofton MD, 41 years ago!
The most impressive thing at the time, know one got a scratch! The mess under the car was as you’d expect, similar to this video.
Ya gotta love the “old” bench racing stories!
This should be a lesson to everyone, don’t have automatics!
Yep no safety gear over the trans….Trans shields, SFI cases, Trans blankets.. if any or all the stuff were on this car ..you would not of seen this..why..its designed to stop you loosing feet or getting bits of metal stuck into you….you may have some crap left on the track..but no bits would be inside the car like this…so if you dont have the gear…use this as a lesson as what happens when they go bang big time…..
Usually something like this is caused by not doing a correct burn out, blowing the sprag and then the drum blows when you hit the gas Or un repaired damage from a bad driveshaft
I’m pretty sure I saw a trans blanket on there. Looks like the convertor / flywheel is where all the destruction came from. Some flywheel shields only go back a few inches from the rear of the block. BTW, safety stuff like a shield and blanket are not cheap, make service a pain in the but and reduce component life in some cases (like the trans blanket). Plus you have to replace or have them recertified. I know my JW ultrabell is out of date but I’m not pulling it out and paying them a bunch of money to tell me it’s OK.
Probably a stock case that had one too many transbrake launches on it.
Safety gear will reduce the likelihood of something like this but it isn’t a 100% guarantee you’ll be fine.
The only 100% guarantee is that Mary Statue, you gotta have faith !!!
I was there ,amazingly they got the track back to business in just 20 mins.