Project FE is dead. Finished. It's over. It all ended fairly dramatically, with a huge puff of white smoke, a few weekends ago during a test and tune session. We had the '69 Mach one at the track to see if we could improve on the 11.39 ET with a 850 cfm carburetor. Victor made a few passes with the carb, and after seeing it no improvement, we swapped back to the 750cfm unit. The car was running fine, no problems whatsoever. But the very next pass, at some point near the eighth mile, we lost sight of the car and the rest of the track in a huge plume of white smoke. It's a shame we didn't get a picture of the smoke cloud, because it truly eclipsed the half end of the track. It wasn't until a few minutes later that we could see the Mach 1 coast on to the return road.

The rest of us knew immediately the car wasn't going to make it back to the pits on its own power. We loaded into a couple cars and drove out to where the red mustang was sitting. As we pulled up, like coroners to a crime scene, we could see the dreaded "blood" of the vehicle oozing out from under the car... the slick, dark mixture of antifreeze and oil that surely signifies death for a motor.

As we circled around the fallen horse, we started yelling out the findings.... holes in the pan.... missing chunks of block... broken rod. Victor explained that everything was going fine down the track, then before he could think about reacting, there was a harsh noise, and the back end started to slide. He knew something had broke and oil or water was getting under the rear tires. Smartly, he didn't attempt to brake, but rather held the wheel straight and allowed the car to coast down until it was safe to steer.

We pushed the car on to the trailer and headed home with the terminally wounded FE and fortunately no more than damaged spirits ourselves. On the way out one of the track workers told us they found about 80% of an Eagle Rod and a piece of broken cam on the track! Ouch.

The next day Victor performed the autopsy. It's important to know what caused the failure, so we can think about ways to prevent it in a future buildup. The damage internally was far more severe than we could have imagined. The Eagle forged steel rods were twisted, snapped, and bent like paper clips in the hands of a nervous secretary. Sections of the block skirt had broken off on both sides, with a four-inch long chunk still attached to the oil pan. The cam was snapped in three pieces, and lifters were in places they never should be. One of the pistons had been forced through the side of the cylinder bore.