Absolutely. After 30 years......maybe a book!

I heard he started by making engines for Escobars desert runners and that’s how he made his millions. Now he just builds race cars

I`d like to see that too, he`s still a young man and it would be interesting to see how he rose so relatively fast, He fixed the head gasket water leaks that we struggled with 22yrs ago. Thinking outside the box

BAKKJOINT great idea that would definitely be interesting

I second this agenda.

The rod failure in the Wagonmaster engine, I think can be attributed to the rod design....those "windows" milled into the beams, as opposed to the full-length relief seen on the beams of most aluminum rods. There are many possible stress points between the pin bore and the crank bore (big & small end) than in the conventional aluminum rods, as we know them. Just my thoughts. Great videos, I try to watch all of them. Thanks.

Steve, I have seen all your vids, researched you when I learned of the Devlen 16... Haters will hate and think they know. Metelergical issues is my guess on the con rod disaster, Crap happens for sure. I loved how you explained that Bailey's junk is your junk.. LOL.. My wife rolls her eyes at me how I can remember a engine /car stuff, but not what I went to the grocery store to get. Keep on doing what makes you happy.

You hit the nail on the head mate!!! Steve has the reputation and experience and expertise that people shouldn't tell him about his own lifes work!!!

Agreed... dont need to go to self-defence... there's always a dickhead comment... I love the no holes barred truth, in the story.

Same.

Yeah I was about to comment the same thing.

Thinking the same along with FEA modeling results

@Coyote LOL.

yep would be interesting. my gut feeling is the post machining heat treatment for these rods was incorect and made them brittle.

@@neilgillam9919 "my gut feeling is the post machining heat treatment for these rods was incorect and made them brittle." Or, the internal engine temperature was high enough to drive additional aging of the particular alloy used. That would explain why they ran fine for several runs and then suffered what appears to be a brittle failure.

for all the rods to fail makes me think they were too hardened. i suspect either a few pistons knocked causing fractures or one chamber failed caused a pressure wave that traveled down the crank like a bump spreads a crack in the windscreen. it looks like they need more of a spring temper.

I totally agree!

Really I would love to see longer videos of everything

I think it was dirty casting of wear the aluminum come form not your fault or Vander you get them form

@@jeffreyjohnson3857 homeschooled were you?i just wonder..vander you get them form??i bet you are fire brand trump supporter and a christian nationalist.

@@jeffreyjohnson3857 I'm thinking it was a heat treat or alloy issue

it s your not you are...i think smx platform is interesting.man i wish engines like that were available when i was racing actively.i ran roots blown 538 pro stock engine and later 526 bbc pro mod type of deal.

Agreed, I would love to see the Metallurgy of these rods.

I had a 400 Pontiac back in the 90s Tollway only had two tolls between Chicago and the Wisconsin border The 400 unwound till the carburetor stopped voluminous pull . 2.73 geared Baddest thing to experience.. But attention to speed was shotgun I was looking forward.

+1 👍

I just made the same comment without seeing yours. My apologies, I think that the vendor was sold a impure product. Seeing how all 8 rods just broke into hundreds of pieces is absolutely insane.

@@spreewerks885 I more suspect they use a material that trades a higher fatigue life for lower absolute strength. They don't seem to claim on their website that they are suitable for 4,000HP, but do claim they have a lot of experience at the 2,000hp level.

@@bradley3549 I appreciate the further information. It makes sense why Steve said he would still use this vendor. Hopefully they will be able to make rods that can withstand the SMX power. Seeing how humble he is to not toss anyone under the bus and clearing up the keyboard mechanics was refreshing to watch. I spent 2 decades in Aviation and always kept my mouth shut unless I was 100% certain on a issue. Take care.

I just showed the video to a friend of mine, who is a metallurgist, and he actually does not think it's a material issue. He works in the industrial fan and pump industry, so he knows his business on pulling and compression forces. Nobody can obviously say anything without properly examining the material and parts, but his point is that if it had been the material, chances are more likely for individual failures and failure points that are more varied. These failed in pretty much the same places in the same way, and because of this, he thinks it's a design issue that creates a specific weak point in that area of the rod so to speak. But again, all of this is assumptions and nobody can be sure without a proper examination of the parts.

Time lapse would be great. Eight hours in five minutes? Over dubbed explaining the process.

@@davidsawyer7880 pulling a KSR? I think he was the first to do that, and it just makes sense.

@@IceBergGeo Maybe David Attenborough was first(joke)!

@@davidsawyer7880 hahahaha

I'm with you on that one

yes I also would like to see the land speed

Right on wat a bad ass project 👍🏽

I agree, all of it. Everything you're willing to share in the shop and at the track is interesting to me.

Funny! Really good one! LOL!

LoL

LoL I have one of those buttons can’t ever figure out what it’s hooked to

Thank you for sharing. Hydrogen embrittement is a great suspect, in Steve's previous building video has shown the lack of gloves or other means of contamination prevention that support the issues. Chemical and electrical interactions inside engines is a great deal that is often overlooked but material can change properties with friction including internal stress friction and vibrations and natural harmonic of the parts. The more I look the more I invest in a laboratory for testing and documentation, small shop picking on big problems we need to solve for the community. Testing information and resources useful.

I also found this guy from the Cletus channel

I think it is possibly part defending but just as much or more wanting to educate us.

I watched the entire assembly video closer after the last video, and his assembly was meticulous and flawless. Maybe I missed something? I dont think so though. Like Steve said, I think this is a simple case of new manufacturer working on rods in a new application. I am sure this will give them a lot of important info to better their product for this specific type of application. No company would willingly/purposefully provide a bad/inferior part, especially to Steve as it does not help a business in any way shape or form. Fact is, you are not always going to get it right the first try when venturing into a new application for your products.

Not "mostly" boosted. That's all they do

It certainly was end of days for them rods....😏👌

They was the weakest link.

Steve took that carnage like a absolute boss…I think I would have had to go on a instant vacation after removing that oil pan 😂

Totally agree, land speed racing sounds very different to drag racing - putting the engine under max load for 6-7 seconds or 6-7 miles will result in some differences I guess and I'd like to hear this stuff addressed. Is the engine designed the same way? Are there any specifics you need to keep in mind?

@@milanskipala7593 look at lemans racing. its way more stresses and you see what they had to do to make a motor last for over 24 hrs under load.

24 he enduro engines higher Stress than Land speed or drag engines? Don’t think so

@@needmoreboost8208 bro do you realize what you just said? 24 hrs wide open basically vs a couple miles. yes land speed cars go fast but they are usually aerodynamic and light which power isnt always the main goal. hence why they get miles to get up to speed. lemans cars which have been known to spin over 20k rpms undergo alot more stress that people dont understand. piston acceleration destroys motors and that happens every time the piston hits top dead center and bottom dead center. at 7k rpms things get scary 10-12k much worse and after 20k its pretty terrifying. some lemans cars have many more cylinders than land speed cars. 12 cylinders at 20k rpms is insane stress on the crank. something it would never feel at 7k rpms for 2 mins or less. its a good thing your thinking power doesnt build my motors or they wouldnt last as long as they do...

I'm with ya!

He did it on this. Just check his videos

I had a similar thought too. Given that all of the rods failed at basically the same time, and with the same failure mode right at the highest stress part of the rod I would be willing to bet that the failure was caused by either a metallurgical error (e.g. the alloy had too much or too little of some component or other) or during the forging of the billet (my understanding of billet rods is that the billet itself is forged in order to shrink grain size before machining) something happened that caused the grain structure to be very large, and therefore particularly brittle. IMO, carbon rods will be very difficult to produce, and they certainly wouldn’t be unbreakable in an application like this. There are 3 primary problems (that I’m aware of) with carbon rods. The first is that engine oil becomes acidic over time. That acidity, especially combined with the heat of a running engine will eat most (maybe even all?) epoxy resins that would be used for laying up the carbon fiber. Also, in the heat of an engine, the epoxy used to hold the carbon together will (generally, I’m sure there are exceptions) get softer, which means the rod wouldn’t be able to take as much power. Secondly, carbon fiber, while incredibly strong, would have a fatigue life in an engine like this. The stresses of running a 4,000hp motor would almost certainly cause microscopic fractures in the fibers throughout the rod. While on lower load applications (like bicycles, or hypercars), carbon is effectively a non-fatiguing material (in this case it just means that the fatigue life is so long you’d be unlikely to run into it), in a crazy application like this, you would definitely be running up into the fatigue life of the carbon. Additionally, because carbon fiber composites are anisotropic materials, the actual life span of a rod would be very hard to predict/plan for. Plus, most damage that does occur would likely be either internal (from layers delaminating) and/or microscopic, you’d need to use an ultrasound in order to actually determine if the rod is still good, which would necessitate a full tear down that I suspect would need to be more frequent than with even aluminum rods (and each rod would be WAY more expensive). Thirdly, it’s extremely difficult to mold carbon into the shapes that are actually needed for a connecting rod. Carbon does not like tight corners, at all and can cause pools of epoxy to form (in the case of infused parts) or even full on voids (particularly in the case of pre-preg materials). Additionally, during the curing process the carbon can shift or bend slightly, depending on the layup and this could conceivably mean that there is a lot of static stress just waiting to cause a failure in an extreme load. Dimensional accuracy and concentricity are also things that can be difficult to achieve with carbon, especially because I would imagine that you wouldn’t want any carbon at the surface of the part (which basically means you can’t machine the rod to spec). Carbon is extremely abrasive, and if any of it is sticking out of the epoxy, it will happily grind through bearings, or just about anything else it comes into contact with. I’m sure it could be done, I’m just not sure that carbon rods would actually end up being cost effective/actually any better than what we already have, especially when considering the fact that carbon is still relatively unpredictable in terms of maximum loading for just about anything other than a flat plate.

That article about the carbon fiber rods is fake news unfortunately, it's been floating around the internet for several years.

Carbon fiber wouldn't work. The material properties aren't good for an application with significant heat.

@Kevin Kaminski I worked in the forging industry for 20yrs. The main reason why forged parts are so strong isn't because it makes the cellular structure smaller. A piece of material before forging while strong, it has a random cell structure, and that can cause weakness in certain areas. The forging process aligns the cell structure and will make it much stronger. I'll admit, up until the other day, I didn't even think carbon rods were possible. I was only going on the post I saw about them and wanted other opinions.

@@tomlompa6598 That’s really cool! From what I’ve seen/read, the grain structure being smaller does at least play some part in the strength/toughness of the metal - up to a point (too small a grain structure being less strong). I’ve seen some manufacturers of forged rods claim that their forgings are stronger than billet rods of a similar weight, because the forging process gives them the ability to control the grain structure/alignment throughout the entire part, and that they can orient the grain in the strongest way for each segment of the part. Supposedly the (I assume) entirely uniform grain structure of billet parts means that they end up being slightly weaker overall. In your experience, would you say that there’s any truth to that? Or would you say that the fully aligned grain structure of a billet that is then machined down should end up being stronger?

Seconded!

yeah, rod faliure is a fact, why? well, thats a better question... something for a material expert to look on in the microscope on

Which after watching the video makes sense after he said he was using rods from a new manufacturer.

Yeah. If they where all cut from the same piece of stock. The weak spot seemed to be the exact same location on all of them.

@@mrray55 that or the aluminum alloy was too hard, making them too brittle to hold up to the forces of that monster of an engine.

Id assume the same. I also would add its probably not just the rods. Im guessing just a bad cast or something with the hardening/annealing process. Uncle Tonys Garage has a good video showing a brand new break rotor that came shattered in 3-4 pieces in the box. Either companies are rushing the process due to demand or just got missed.

Exactly, he found the limit then some. R&D isn't for everyone. The haters should be thanking Steve for taking chances so they dont have to.

T26? I highly doubt that. they maybe a non heat treatable alloy. 7000 series

stress fractures like you said in the rod could have allowed them to just pull out when the first one went, they probably all went shortly after, ripping the bolt out of the rod material that was shattering around it.

I think the material the rods were made out of wasn't what it's suppose to be. I'm sure whoever made the rods got that material from some other company, was it subpar ? That or whoever did the math vs specs for those rods mis calculated a little lol

Bet the entire batch was cut out of the same blank stock.

I agree that it has to be some sort of impurity or even the heat treat process, if Aragon gets low during heat treat it will mess up hardness. To me seems impurity or soft or brittle problem. Interested to find out

I would watch any of those series you are suggesting. All of them sound fascinating

The big ends steve was holding are mainly the result of uncontrolled rods....not the actual breakage point

@fordfan03; Your comments are clearly among those which indicate Your lacking within proper information, knowledge of physics, materials, metallurgy, engineering, though You have assessed the issue properly to be within the connecting rod materials, metallurgy - only through proper steps, process, methods of, with, within investigation, measurement, assessment, evaluation, differentiation, discernment, analysis, concepts, principles, determination can the cause of the connecting rods to break apart be determined. ->Clearly the evidence shown is certainly, absolutely insufficient for any proper expert to determine the cause. ->the evidence, logic, reason within the concepts, principles of materials, metallurgy, physics and especially within the concepts and principles of resonance, are clearly, obviously in opposition, counter indicative, counter any proper logic, reason, sense. =>Thus, these possible claims are clearly, obviously, certainly, absolutely just incorrect, faulty, 'poor guesses', false, nonsense. Your comments are one of two posted which attempt this clearly incorrect, faulty, 'poor guesses', false, nonsense claim with 'resonance' If You desire, please see my more detailed comment to @J Gregory Kine; about his false, faulty ideas - specifically about 'resonance' - it contains a more proper description of the evidence and necessary details for a proper assessment, evaluation, analysis, determination along with areas to investigate, measure, assess, evaluate, etc. within a proper process, method, etc. which proper physicists, chemists.material experts, metallurgists and engineers proceed, with, use, and follow -> never 'guess work', estimation, presumptions, assumptions, 'trial and error', etc. -> lack of knowledge, concepts, principles, etc. -these comments also include positive comments and suggestion to Steve about and determination for and with his posted vlogs along with some of my background, basis, knowledge, expertise. All The Best and Much Success in Your Quest, Health Happiness, and Well Being. 😊 Sincerely ☺

@@newtonfirefly3584 Please explain why these rods failed. Thank You!

Also, you might suggest to your vendor to go over their heat treatment process and records. I've seen heat treating done improperly cause similar results.