10 replies to this topic

[lateralforce]

Explain as you would a child. I'm new to F1 and after seeing Rubens and Dc's blowout I'm dying to know the mechanisms of a typical F1 engine blowout : . Thanks!

[desmo]

Typically one of the hot rotating or sliding bits within the engine fails creating debris which in turn interferes with other bits causing yet more debris, etc. Now off to bed, you've school early tomorrow.

[Colin]

When you see the REALLY big white-cloud blowouts, it's usually that the coolant supply around the cylinders or the exhaust has been penetrated, and the coolant get really hot and comes out the exhaust as steam.

[Jezztor]

Just for interest, a blueish smoke would in all likelihood mean the gear box would have (as they say in italian) partito . (given way)

Jezz

[JollyRoger]

Can't remember where I heard this, I have a hunch it was from Alan Jones during his commentary.

Anyway he was talking about engine failures "back in his time" and how the teams didn't want to say what went wrong with the engine, so they would reguarly say it was an electrical problem.

One of the mechanics explained the exact nature of the "electrical problem". Apparently the distributor had been damaged - due to part of the engine deciding to become airborne. The distributor was severley damaged as it traveled first out through the engine and then through the distributor. - Electrical problem!

[RiverRunner]

I'm not absolutely sure about how many different ways you can blow an F-1 motor,but our commonest cause of blown engines in my days in drags was what we called hydraulic failures.This is when the spark failed to ignite the fuel and the cylinder would fill with uncompressable amounts of fuel.We would generally go through 12-14 gallons of fuel per 1/4 mile race to give you an idea of the amount of methanol/nitro we were trying to light off.Very easy to drown the fire if you run to rich,run too lean and you burn up every piston and melt down the heads,which ain't cheap.
This can be rather catastrophic in any number of areas,depending on engine speed when hydraulics occur,mostly we would bend/break connecting rods which would then go out the side of the block,in fact we had replaceable 'windows' on the blocks that we could reweld a plate back into very quickly and save the block.Sometimes,and the most expensive failure,was the when the crank and rod journals got taken out too,the billet block is basically trash at that point and so is the very pricey crankshaft.
We had no coolant,or even the ability to run coolant in the block at all to worry about,methanol and nitro burn very cold so hurting a cylinder wasn't really an issue,besides,we'd only run the engine a max of about 4 minutes and between 6-10 seconds under load.

BTW,if you have a savvy driver,he can save lotsa dough for the team.If he feels the car/rail slow at all,he gets pitched forward and can shut off every thing with a flick of his finger on the steering wheel mounted kill switch.Generally Funny Car drivers are real good at this since the engine is about three feet in front of him and the tranny is between his feet,it's just plain self preservation to notice every nuance about how that engine is firing.

[juanjo24]

Do you remember last year Barcelona GP (Hakkinen)?

OK, they said that the CLUTCH was broken, but I don't undestand how a broken clutch can smoke so much as it did. I can only guess that it smoked like crazy because it was slipping so much when it was damaged...

Do you know exactly what happened?

[AS110]

Originally posted by JollyRoger
Can't remember where I heard this, I have a hunch it was from Alan Jones during his commentary.

Anyway he was talking about engine failures "back in his time" and how the teams didn't want to say what went wrong with the engine, so they would reguarly say it was an electrical problem.

One of the mechanics explained the exact nature of the "electrical problem". Apparently the distributor had been damaged - due to part of the engine deciding to become airborne. The distributor was severley damaged as it traveled first out through the engine and then through the distributor. - Electrical problem!

It must be a common tale in the paddock,In his book"You Don't Know the Half Of It'' Aaron Slight mentions how he had to say he crashed the Honda after an engine siezure.He seemed happy to take the blame.
The Honda's officially expired because electical problems.He mentions stray conrods knocking alternators off,which caused an electrical problem.

[Oho]

Originally posted by juanjo24
Do you remember last year Barcelona GP (Hakkinen)?

OK, they said that the CLUTCH was broken, but I don't undestand how a broken clutch can smoke so much as it did. I can only guess that it smoked like crazy because it was slipping so much when it was damaged...

Do you know exactly what happened?

Ave !!!

Yes, apparently TC induced violent vibrations broke an oil seal between clutch and gearbox, oil leaked from the gerbox into the clutch causing it to intially slip and subsequently burn. Engine was running even after Mika had parked it on the grass.

- Oho -

[marion5drsn]

# 1, The old “Rod thru the block Syndrome” is generally due to some overstress problem and the lubrication system. This usually happens when the driver backs off the throttle and the inertia forces break the rod bolts and goodbye conrod.
# 2, The old “Valve head thru the top of the piston Syndrome” the engine is running too lean valve is over stressed over heated and drops off the valve stem or some other part and melts its way thru the piston, oil pumps it’s way up into the exhaust system and you have a beautiful blue/black smoke and an almost instant exit of the car from the fray.
# 3, There are lots of other things that happen but they are similar. Someone mentioned glycol smoke; this usually happens in motion pictures in aircraft, I can’t really say it happens very often in racecars. A German Bf-109 shoots down a British Spitfire and you see LOTS of white smoke. Very dramatic! I have often wondered if German planes used glycol as their tanks used plain ordinary old water that is AIGHT TOO OH. M.L. Anderson

[Christiaan]

JollyRodger, I believe the incident you refer to happenned at ferrari when the cylinder head melted and a piston and conrod debri flew out and knock out the distributer