Power adders play that interesting “best friend/worst enemy” role in the lives of racers and hot rodders the world over. Lots of boost can make your car fly but it can also eat up parts in a literal instant. Nitrous oxide can make you a hero or in the case of this video, turn your car into an exploding inferno at a moment’s notice. While we’re not sure where this video as filmed, we think it was fairly recent. The starter being in a coat means it may have been on the chilly side the night that the driver of the Halfbreed Mutang put his foot down and then saw the sun rise from under his hood.
Manifold explosions (stop calling them nitrous explosions) are the result of a number of possible causes. Everything form a valve train failure to fuel puddling in the intake, to a lean condition can cause the entire mixture in the intake manifold to ignite with often spectacular. In this case the driver had the throttle depressed so all of the pressure and fire escaped freely. Had the blades been closed it can be even more destructive. A really nice carbon fiber hood got it bad on this occasion and some stuff under the hood was way more crispy than it needed to be. Why? People.
One of the things that astounds people (us included) at events like Lights Out 7 is the fact that there are hordes of people standing on the starting line basically with the cars. They are in close quarters and the risks are obviously huge. In the case of this video, the poster states that it took so long to get an extinguisher on the car because safety people were blocked by all the people at the starting line. Outside of a chunky guy ripping his shirt off to try and beat the flames out, this thing was untouched for way too long in our opinion.
As we said at the top of the page, power adders can make you a hero or make you an unexpected firefighter!
Nice job by the plumber’s crack guy. Whipping that t-shirt accomplished a lot. You don’t see it in the video, but I bet he has a hydrant painted on his stomach.
The 20 people with iphones were more interested in pulling the hood off than getting the driver out.
I agree bangshift, crowded start lines are not good. Whenever I’ve seen footage from events and at LO7 I have often wondered why theres people on the start line, it isn’t safe, and surely affects the track crews ability to do their job.
When watching footage of crashes etc it amazes me that the track announcers has to repeatedly say “stay back”
I thought it was good move for the management of the track crew to stop the racing until all those people moved.
At Santa Pod they tell you to make sure arms and legs are not through the fence or theyll have to stop racing until every part of everyone is back on the right side of the fence. I don’t think theres ever been as big a delay as there was at LO7, which did give me chance to get something to eat, but sucked at is was late here the uk LOL
At Santa pod here in England, you dont get past a certain point if you don’t have a pass to say your’e with a car, and once your car has gone, you have to get your ass out the way for the next team to do their thing. When theres a crash the safety crew are on the case and the spectators stay where the spectators should be.
I think it’s a novelty, leftover from the old days of real street racing; where there was no spectator area, to speak of – and with the popularity of street racing TV shows and ‘wanna-be’ grudge racing at local drag strips has brought this on
Like i’ve said before, just a matter of time until someone gets hurt bad or worse on the starting line. And another thing that blows my mind is crew members or wannabes who walk all over the starting line and even down track, stomping their shoe into the surface like they’re putting out a cigarette. Do they really think that makes them look like an Austin Coil. Or maybe if their $250 sneaker does not hook up they have a magic wand up their a** they can pull out and wave over the track and make it all gooooood. Yeah.
Actually, the most dangerous place to watch a drag race is in the stands.