Broken Mag Engine

[AustinWood]

The failure of the engine in my Nippy was caused by the rear crank web breaking on the power stroke of No4. The bottom ring was pushed out of the cylinder and the broken stub of the crank then hit the the main part of the crank forcing it up.
The car had lost its original engine and front axle but retained the close ratio gearbox and low ratio axle. I had done a lot of work on the block and was able to build another engine round it.

[Andy Cawley]

That’s the most impressive blow up story so far, on the scrappies filing cabinet, now that is impressive. I wonder what the best story will be.

Perhaps we should have a trophy?.

[Bruce Nicholls]

Having seen the photos I count myself as extremely lucky. The crank on my RP broke in 1972 at about 1 a.m. when I dropped down into 3rd as I turned into my home road. Fortunately my foot was on the clutch and the engine just stopped. Most unspectacular and it was a short while before I worked out what had happened. No damage to anything else and I just took another suitable crank off the pile of spares then in my garage and was back on the road within a week or so. The crank had broken across the rear web and went on to do good service, mounted on a piece of mahogany as a treasure hunt trophy.

[Andy Cawley]

That last post reminded me of my first crank failure. It was 60 years ago and I was 17. I had persuaded my mother that she should go shares with me in a motor car, a very rusty Ruby that went under the name of Eskimo Nell!!!! I think I must have driven it every where at valve bounce revs. The crank lasted only a few weeks poor old Mum never got to drive the car and I had a salutary lesson. The bodywork was that rusty that the wreck was consigned to the scrappy.   Looking back there were several lessons learned over that incident .