What are the odds?

[Tomtall]

Storyline : Grass Lake nationals 2009. ASR final heat #1. 12 boat field. Adam Low 80M goes into turn one in the middle of the pack. Gets side swiped by one racer and gets his engine rearended by another at the same time. Engine drops down on one cylinder. Adam pulls into infield disapointed he couldn't finish the nationals in ASR. O-well that's racing s*it happens. But what happened to the engine?

Upon returning to the pits we find #1 cylinder trashed due to a steel part being digested. #1 block is scrap. However motor turns over freely. No sign of bearing damage or reed damage. We'll tear it down at home later.

Upon teardown at home all rotating group is fine. The only scrap pieces still embeded into the piston dome appear to be spring steel?

Engine cover is laying upside down on work bench when Adam notices something. The following pictures tell the story. This retainer made its way into the carb. throat and thrashed our #1 engine.

I encourage all "A" OMC engine owners to silicon over their emblem retainers just to be safe. The odds of this happening are probably 100,000,000 to 1 but it happened to us it could happen to you also.

See you all at Big Rapids with fresh engine.

[racer121M]

So Tom...a hole in one...

[STEVE FRENCH]

amazing that made it past the reed cage!

100N

[ricochet112]

Same failure happened to ours while my son was out front at the divisionals. It sounds like the piston ring locating pin came out of the piston and allowed the piston ring to rotate, then you have chunks of rings slammin' around the combustion chamber...

Poor quality control on the pistons caused a bunch of these to do this. That retaining push cap piece that came off the cowling wouldn't get through the reeds to do the damage.

On this same subject, I just got my block back from being sleeved and now needs some work; does anyone have Ed Runne's number? My number for him, is no good now?

[Tomtall]

Think again

Poor quality control on the pistons caused a bunch of these to do this. That retaining push cap piece that came off the cowling wouldn't get through the reeds to do the damage.

Like I said ALL rotating group parts were fine. ALL ring locating pins are intact. The pieces we pulled out of the piston dome match the spring clip perfectly. This part DID make it past the reeds and did do this damage.

[42M]

I know of 3 A's that finished without cowlings at Top O'

[Islandmon]

Interesting and amazing at the same time...............good eye Adam . See ya at Big Rapids.

Sam

[ricochet112]

Like I said ALL rotating group parts were fine. ALL ring locating pins are intact. The pieces we pulled out of the piston dome match the spring clip perfectly. This part DID make it past the reeds and did do this damage.

Simply amazing...

[Mark 72@E]

Thanks for sharing

I encourage all "A" OMC engine owners to silicon over their emblem retainers just to be safe. The odds of this happening are probably 100,000,000 to 1 but it happened to us it could happen to you also.

Thanks for sharing. It's been added to my To Do List.