Every auto media outlet has their beloved project car, at least one. Roadkill has the General Mayhem Charger. Popular Hot Rodding had the Project X 1957 Chevrolet. Mopar Action has the “Green Brick” Valiant, and so on and so forth. In the case of Street Machine, they have an Ford Falcon FG known as the “Turbo Taxi”. It’s a yellow cab that is known for ripping down the strip to good quarter-mile times (they are aiming for tens once the new transmission makes an appearance) but along the way, the Falcon has had it’s shares of incidents. One of the major ones occurred in the middle of last year. After running a string of great numbers in the 11-second range, the LPG-powered Barra decided that life was no longer worth living and went out in grand fashion with a nice chemtrail that kicked off towards the end of the strip after the car was pushing a record run. That’s the breaks…it runs the best it will ever run half a second before everything goes straight into the trash can. That’s never a good day, and any racer that has lunched an engine in this kind of fashion knowns the sickness in the gut that comes with a full-blown failure. I know perfectly after grenading an LT-1 in a 1990s Camaro at the first King of the Heap race.
While sorting out the Street Machine garage, Scotty came across the remains of the Barra and decided to do a necropsy to figure out just what all went to hell when the rod bashed out two decent sized holes in the block. It’s more or less scrap metal at this point, so follow along and check out just how beat this engine was when time ran up and everything went ka-blooey! It’s a lesson to learn from for the next engine and any future Barra-based project cars!
