I think I’m done for the year….

I was in round 3 and my motor let go about 5 feet before the finish line Sunday. I won the race, but lost the motor. There was a sudden loss of power followed instantly by a huge vibration. I still had oil pressure…I kinda thought I broke a u-joint or something at first. I rounded the corner to get off the track, the vibration died down….I gave it a little gas to get to the time slip booth and felt a HUGE vibration again, so I killed the motor and rolled. I parked it just past the time slip booth, got out and looked under the car. A little oil was leaking down the side of the oil pan, so I immediately told the time slip guy to radio up to the starting line and have them check the track, but there was nothing on the track though, thank goodness. I checked over the motor, nothing sticking out….so I restarted it just to see…it started fine, idled “normal” for a second or so, I gave it a little gas in neutral (1500 RPM) and the huge vibration came right back…..obviously something is broken in the bottom end.

I drove the Cuda to the track that day (of course), so I had to have my wife drive me home to get my truck and trailer. Thank the good Lord for my racing friends that stuck around for an hour after I broke to help push my heap up onto my trailer.

I’ll have to pull the motor to see what happened, but I’m not motivated to do it right now…..I’m probably going to let it sit for a week….or 2. I know whatever broke in the bottom end is not going to be cheap to fix. What really stinks is I JUST had the motor out a couple months ago when I had to replace the oil pan…at the time I checked the bearings and they all looked good, so who knows.

I'll update this thread with pics when I decide to dive in and see what happened, it might be a while though....zero motivation right now.