Motor failure, that’s a theme for me this week after dumping the guts of a Gen II Chevrolet small-block out of a 1994 Camaro. To be fair, the LT-1 in the car was running on known bad main and rod bearings…it was a matter of not if, but when it would grenade. The car could’ve been limped around and made to last the entire event…at the beginning, it only made a light tapping under acceleration. The last few minutes, it sounded like a steam tractor chugging along before the inevitable puncture of the block.

I had warning before the 350 packed it in. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind that the Camaro’s final minutes were at hand. But for the owner of this rotary-powered Mazda Familia, it doesn’t appear that there was any concern for the rotary underneath the hood at all. What happened here? More than likely, a flywheel explosion at RPMs turned lots of parts in and around the bellhousing into shrapnel. This is one of the scarier blow-ups we’ve seen…popping an engine and making a mess is one thing, but the inertia and general sawblade shape of a fast-moving flywheel coming apart is something else entirely. Scary…