[Fot] Cal Speedway Engine failure

[Steven Belfer]

A couple weeks ago at Fontana I shut down the engine after lap 6 of  
the first session of the weekend when my engine started making a  
metallic noise, bad news.
Pulled the pan at the track after much prodding from the guys to find  
the pan full of sparkling metal bits.   just pulled it apart tonight  
and found that the #2 rod bearing is in bad shape.
At first glance, most everything else looks pretty good.  The #2  
piston has slight scuff marks on the skirt and the crank looks good.   
The carillo rods have some dark heat marks near the destroyed bearing  
area.  The spun bearing lost about 3/8" of material at the front end  
and the rest of it is the full width.  In other words, one end is kind  
of pear shaped.

My #3 lifter is hammered too.  We'll see what else I find and I hope  
most of the parts are still good.  I'm sure that many grams of metal  
flakes have pumped there way into every part of the engine, including  
the oil cooler.  After more investigation, I'll see if the spun  
bearing is the culprit or perhaps the result of some other problem.

~Steve