Eating a valve..... how simple can it be.??
I had a valve break in a race engine at around 140 to 150. It bounced around destroying the piston, which those pieces then went though the intake to the other bank, destroying two more pistons, which bent a rod enough to cause it to hit the side of the block, breaking the block and the crank. That in turn dumped the coolant on the track and under the rear tires, which caused a severe loss of traction. That loss of traction caused the car to swap ends about 1.5 times before the wall reached down and caught the car in the left rear corner. There were no soft walls then. That impact knocked the breath out of me. That impact also knocked the rear end forward about a foot, breaking the case of the transmission, which at that time the transmission decided to try to come up into the driver compartment with me. The shifter hit my right leg hard enough that I thought the thigh bone was broken.
I finally got my foot on the brake pedal and several hours later, or seconds I can't remember which, the car came to a stop down in the grass. The crash rescue guys were there pretty quickly. The first guy realized I was having trouble breathing and motioned for the medics to hurry up. Fortunately they realized all that was wrong was I had the breath knocked out of me. I kept pointing to my right leg, motioning my hands like I was breaking a stick and they realized my leg was hurt.
The medics would not let me take my helmet off, which is something I really wanted to do. Two guys worked with me to get my breathing back. Through hand motions I let them know my neck felt fine, it was just my leg hurting. When I could finally talk, I said I need to take this $#@% hemet off.!! They finally did let me take it off. The rescue guys ended up cutting the roof off so they could stabilize my back and leg. Once the back board was under me and my head was severely stabilized to it, they lifted me straight up just enough to put an air splint on my leg. After that they strapped both legs to the back board and then finally got me out of the car.
A quick trip to the hospital showed my leg was fine. My neck, which I never complained about, was also fine. The car was.....totaled to say the least. The engine was destroyed. So was the transmission. Even the steering wheel was bent. The seat and the belts did their job. The main part of the roll cage did its job. The crumple sections in the rear did their job. The fuel cell held up and not a drop was spilled. The seat and the rear axle was used later in a dirt track car.
The wrecker did its job as well. And so ended my spectacular ARCA series career after 4 races.
All because of a simple broken valve...
But I can look back and say at least it was not as bad a day as this guy is having....
