This is a cool video and not just destruction for the point of destruction. There’s an education element here. Of course the humble little centrifugal clutch has been the method of getting everything from chainsaws and go karts to top fuelers moving over the years. It’s not a hard principle to comprehend, right? Weights fly out when spun, they contact the body of the clutch, and that causes the whole thing to kind of lock up and spin, transferring power to the axle, usually by way of a chain. In this video we see this motion taken to the extreme.
Effectively the axle that the clutch is trying to spin has been locked, so the clutch does its job but is unable to actually spin. This causes incredible heat to be built up as the weights try like hell to grab the body and turn it. You’ll see two different styles of clutches used and abused here. The first is more typical of a go kart with individual weights gathered witch a circular spring. The second is a smaller unit that uses a cross spring like one would find in a drum brake.
The super slow motion video work here is neat, as is the failure point of the clutch.
