Pretty Bad Day At the track

The remains of my LS3


Brian

Wow. Are you okay? Any shrapnel come into the cockpit?

Any idea what caused it? Oil or fuel starvation, over-rev?

No Damage to me or the car. One car behind me hit the oil and went into the wall but he was OK also and his car was not to badly damaged.

As best I can tell the timing chain broke pistons hit open valves rods broke and that caused all the damage. This happened at the end of the back straight at Palm Beach. So around 150 MPH and 6500 RPM. With all that momentum and shrapnel inside there was nothing left to save.

New crate engine is in and tuned. I'll be at Roebling Road in GA this weekend and see how it goes.

Brian

Holy mackerel, that's impressive. Glad you and the car are OK other than the damage to the old engine.

-Dave

Brian Degulis wrote:....... So around 150 MPH and 6500 RPM. With all that momentum and shrapnel inside there was nothing left to save.

New crate engine is in and tuned. I'll be at Roebling Road in GA this weekend and see how it goes. Brian

Wow, you dont' mess around do you? And new motor in already. Is 6500 where the LS3 should red-line? For my 3.8 SC V-6 I had heard that 5500 RPM was a safe/reasonable red and that's where HP and torque top out for my car. With a Tremac 5 speed out of a 2000 +/- Camaro.

The LS3 comes with the rev limiter set at 6800. If You hit the rev limiter the recorded highest RPM will be 7000. I hit the rev limiter a lot on the old engine although it appears that had nothing to do with the failure. On the new engine I had it set at 6500. After using the car on track and realizing how often I'm at or above 6500 I changed the differential from 3:73 to 3:42. I probably won't like it but I need to reduce RPM.

Brian