A/Fuel Explosion!

One of the A/Fuel cars at Maple Grove suffered an explosion while trying to start the engine in the pits area. Nasty Stuff. One crew member was pretty torn up and removed to the hospital. I believe it was "Bare Bones Racing" Hope everyone is okay. Brownman and the FNG's

 

maple grove

Very bad explosion, crew member --two broken legs, not life thretening but very nasty injuries. Keep him in your prayers.

lucky that no spectators hurt. could have been much worse.

 

Glad to here nothing life threatning! Was it an FED or or new style?

 

Here's to hoping your crewman recovers in full.

It sounds like every precaution was excersised in the safety aspect of the firing of your car. It must have been "just one of those things".

As a supervisor in the electrical industry, the absolute last thing I would ever want to see is one of the guys getting hurt in any way. I'm sure you feel the same way. Good luck in the future.

 

ED, Sorry to hear that crewmember was hurt.

I have a question, was your main fuel line hook up to the distrubution block while you were watching first round?

We have a procedure on the cars I have worked on that we do not connect that line until we are ready to fire on nitro after cleaning all lines out of course. This takes away the posiblity of a check sticking and sifaning nitro into the motor. We go as far as when we are warming up on alcohol before we go to nitro we hook the line up as the motor is running on alcohol. and on the starting line that main fuel line does not get connected until we are next pair.

Hope this will help any team not doing this.

 

Get Well Soon!!

What A Horrible Thing To Have Happen, Hope All Is Well And Everyone Makes A Speedy Recovery, Eddie, Pat From Draw Called Me Last Night Looking For Some Information About Mark, She Was Really Concerned And Would Like To Help In Any Way She Can. I See You Have Posted An Address Can You Possibly Get Her A Phone # Of A Family Member Or Maybe She Can Go Directly Through You..
Mark Get Well And Eddie @crew Hang Tight.
Scott,and The Gill Crew!i Have Her Phone # If You Need It
Call Me In You Need To 774-230-3538.

 

Someone educate me here, how can Fuel get in the cylinders if the Motor/Fuel pump aren't turned over? Is it just leakage from the Nozzles?

 

Ed,
Thanks for the update on Mark's condition. With the rumor mill that was floating around that day, we didn't know what had happened to him. He's a good man. It's always good to see his smiling face when he comes over to our pit to shoot the breeze. On behalf of Ron Zavarella, Victor Terenzio, and the whole crew, we wish him a speedy recovery.

 

A/FD Explosion

Hello:
I'm a NFG here, but not to the world of drag racing. If I may, I'd like to suggest something: Don't stand alongside the motor when you fire it. Stand either in front of or behind the motor and you lessen the chance of being hit directly by debris from the blast. Your ears will still catch hell, but the flying parts are much less likely to get ya.
Any time we fire our Nostalgia TF car, nobody stands alongside the motor. Tedford and McGee had an explosion with their NTF car several years ago, and it shot a head stud through the valve cover and the side of the trailer. Fortunately, nobody was standing alongside the motor or the results could easily have been fatal.
Hopefully this will be a help, and prevent any further injuries to crew and drivers.

 

Jr. Dragster????

I don't know why there is a Jr. Dragster below my name, but I don't work on the Jr. cars. We run a Nostalgia Top Fueler on the west coast. Just came back from the Soggy Nationals, AKA GoodGuys Northwest Nostalgia Drags. Three days of on and off rain, seldom hard rain, but enough to cancel the meet. 966 miles each way for the practice, 'cause we never got to make one run. The only consolation was that the country is beautiful, and nobody else made a run either.

 

Henry, the Jr. Dragster just means you only have a few posts here. Once you reach 100(?) posts you get a different title I guess.

 

A/f

Do you guys back your engine down befor you fire up ?
I have worked with B/AFC and we would back it down before any fireup??

 

Also we leave the spark plugs out of the motor until we are ready to fire.

 

A-fuel explosion

I have been running one of these cars for about 4 years and thank god have not had an explosion. This is just my thoughts about blowing the engine down.
For fuel to siphon back thru the barrel valve from the tank the fuel level in the tank on the stand would have to be higher than the barrel valve or at least as high. This is what happened to Hirata couple of seasons ago as I understood it. They blew the car down and put back into trailer. The front end was elevated allowing the fuel to enter the bv and get to the cown nozzle checks. The down nozzle checks should have held the fuel above the nozzle but seems as though you get one that will dribble every once in awhile
allowing fuel over time to accumulate in that cyl. For this to happen the down nozzles on the cyl that exploded had to be open. The problem is if the car front end was not elevated the fuel should never get to the nozzle. There is another possibility and that is if the fuel shutoff was slightly open when blowing down and filled up the bv or left fuel in the bv. As will said it is very important to analize this closly and try to figure out the cause as it will help us all in the future and could prevent a similar accident. We always put the lower containment on befor warming up but will also install the valve cover restraints in the future. It is hard to crank the engine without the person operating the alcohol shutoff and pulling the plugs exposed, but is certainly possible for others to stand clear. Sometimes I wonder if it would not be better to crank these engines on nitro. One thing I have cautioned a friend of mine is to not pull the mag kill plugs until the engine is spinning. It is also a good idea to have small holes drilled at the lowest point of the curve in the header. If you back the engine off before cranking and fuel runs out of any of these holes you know the cyl is not cleared of nitro. We usually hook our main fuel line up to the bv before pulling into the stage lanes but will have to think this over. When blowing out the barrel valve and distribution block with the #8 lines disconnected at the heads always open the barrel valve wide open. We have a piece of welding rod that holds the butterflies open while we are blowing the engine down. I don't know if any of this will info will help but if you know a better way please don't hesitate to email me.
Bob Holley

 

A/Fuel Explosion

EDDIE,hope that you and your crew are doing better.I sent MARK a card yesterday.It should be there when he gets home.I was in MICKEY FERRO'S PIT when it happened.It was some bang.HANG IN THERE
LOURIE RACING: ERIC,JOY,GEORGE,KEVIN,TODD,& CHUCK.

 

Blown Down

I agree that you should blow everything down and we do so. However it is important to remember that for this kind of problem to exist takes enough fuel to fill the air space or cc's left in the chamber at TDC on the compression stroke. This is quite a bit but varies with your compression. A little fuel that might remain after a proper blow down would not do it. Will the purpose for the hole in the pipe is that you can instantly see when backing the motor down that the leaking cyl has fuel in it. It also removes the possibility of a puddle of fuel remaing in the pipe and causing a loud bang when the mag wires are pulled. In this case I think I would revisit each step in the blow down proceedure and the elevation of the fuel in the tank to determine where a significant amount of fuel could have entered into the bv.