Catastrophic engine failure is always fascinating, at least for the audience. It’s generally less fun for the person forking over the cash for the engine parts that were just sent into lower Earth orbit. Except at this past Ultimate Callout Challenge at Indiana’s Lucas Oil Raceway, it was borderline terrifying for a few spectators watching a diesel pickup on a chassis dyno.
As you see in the video above, a high-performance, Cummins-powered Dodge Ram is running on a dyno. The truck, campaigned by the folks at Power Driven Diesel, was making seriouspower. As the folks from Power Driven Diesel explain, the team was chasing 3000 hp, which is an impressive number for any road-going engine. And as sometimes can be the case with high-performance engines, chaos ensues during the dyno pull.
You can see everything going well for all parties involved: The truck is making a lot of noise and power, and everyone is happy. That is, until the Cummins engine’s internals become externals. The engine fails catastrophically and sends pistons and other pieces into the grandstands. For the full story and video, check out this article from Road & Track.
