Mike Troxel's PSI explosion from Phoenix!

[Toejam]

Isn't this the incident that banned the PSI for 2-3 years???

YouTube - Top Alcohol Dragster Blower Explosion

 

[DrRocket]

Was that "clinking" sound I heard pieces of the blower landing around the video taker?

 

[Wes]

Wasn't that Bill Barney? The video is sketchy at best but the car looks to be in Castrol GTX colors.

 

[Toejam]

Wasn't that Bill Barney? The video is sketchy at best but the car looks to be in Castrol GTX colors.

Lyle Greenberg filmed that, and it was indeed Mike Troxel. And yes it schrapneled the Grandstands hard after that!

Norm Drazy had told me that Mike was running the Blower at 130%(or close) over and Broke a sprag sending the Motor to over 13,000!

 

[Randy]

Here's a nasty one:

YouTube - Wow! Dragster explodes and burns within seconds

 

[Tim5636sc]

I was at the WDRS..(REMEMBER THOSES!) race at Palmdale 1989 when Rick Ewens blew up his PSI vs. Rodney Florney in round 1....A peice of that blower went thru Rodney's body panels, darn near his feet if I remember correctly....

Same year in Vegas I believe someone in the stands, was hit by a peice of the a blown up PSI????

 

[dave]

Here's a nasty one:

YouTube - Wow! Dragster explodes and burns within seconds

Wow Randy,
That is one of the worst nitrous explosions I have ever seen. I saw a top sportsman car blow a hood scoop about 50 feet in the air, and shatter an intake manifold in the staging lanes at a Q32 race a few years ago. I help my father in law with 600 inch 10.5 nitrous car, and I am very aware that can happen about any run. Man that is scary. Nothing, I mean nothing, cool about fire.

 

[Lyle]

Lyle Greenberg filmed that, and it was indeed Mike Troxel. And yes it schrapneled the Grandstands hard after that!

Norm Drazy had told me that Mike was running the Blower at 130%(or close) over and Broke a sprag sending the Motor to over 13,000!

Joe:

You are correct that it is Troxel in Gary Sumek's Lenco car. When I bought my PSI back in 98 I told Norm about the video and he told me a similar story to what you describe. I was always very impressed that he stuck with it and got it approved a few years later. That showed huge commitment! Sorry for the quality, my original is much better (though still not exactly Diamond P quality). By the time I converted the VHS to DVD and then converted to an electronic file the quality was terrible unless I made it a 20+MB file. Maybe somebody can give me pointers.

I believe that everyone that had a PSI on their car at this race was parked on the spot until they took it off and put a different blower on their car.

David:
That "clinking" was in fact shrapnel flying around. I think a couple of people got hit (minor injuries). When it was done I was wondering how stupid everyone (including me) was to have just stood there with that crap flying everywhere. Apparently I had not gotten any smarter than when I came within 20 ft of getting hit by a complete blower off a T/F car when I was 11 years old at the 1971 AHRA Winternats at Beeline in Phoenix.

Lyle Greenberg
Jennifer Greenberg Motorsports
Rachel Greenberg Motorsports
Lyle Greenberg Motorsports

 

[Wes]

Ahhhh....that's why! I always remembered Troxel's cars being red. Sumek's car was white with a band of black and red or grey along the bottom. Mystery solved in my head.

 

[dragboatphoto]

Another blower explosion.....http://photos.imageevent.com/ekimzark/bryanvideos/tah.wmv
Heres a photo of the same as the video...

Horrible picture but that baby is gone.....

And then for good measure one non blower explosion.....this is pretty much the a fuel tank full of nitro exploding......

Heres what somebody posted about it on my website.... "The blow by tube fell againtst the headers and caught fire. The flame was then sucked up into the air intake for the fuel tank and BOOM"

Sorry dont have any asphalt explosion stuff....yet.

 

[mike]

Ok here is a little info on what happened on that run....

The engine on the dragster wound to high C shortly after the launch, which sent the car's PSI, overdriven by about 80%, to 20,000 rpm. At that point, centrifugal forces seperated the large cast - aluminium male and female rotors into a hundred pieces, and the shards took the supercharger case with them. Particularly troubling to NHRA officials was what happened to the blower bag surrounding the unit: it was gone. According to Drazy, the Lenco car's overspeed condition was not the sole cause of the disintergration; over - speeds have happened in the past on PSI's, without rotor failure. In the case of the Lenco car, the supercharger had been subjected to a number of backfires in the months prior to the Phoenix race, which weakend the strength of what Drazy subsequently learned was an already brittle casting. When the rotors were momentarily spun to 20,000 rpm, they seperated along stress cracks developed during the backfires.

I'll type up the full article later on after I've rested. I just got home from work and found this write up in one of my zines.

Regards,

Mike

 

[Ma Green]

I was working for Mike Kuhl Superchargers at the time of that run. Mike was down there when NHRA pulled the plug on those blowers. I shipped out 8 or 9new blowers to Phoenix that day. What a thrash!

 

[mike cummings]

Rodney Florney in round 1....

there's a name I haven't heard of in a long time...

 

[Draw 3D]

I worked at a machine shop that was involved in the first prototypes of the PSI. One of our engineers told the PSI team that the case was a weak point and should be re-evaluated.

Unfortunately, I was not able to follow the project because of pressing government projects I was involved so I don't know if the case was ever changed or not, but I do know I could not then see some of the external changes suggested.