Camaro ZL1 Explodes on Dyno in Dramatic Fashion
On a seemingly routine tuning session, this Camaro ZL1 suffered a dramatic transmission failure that even caused the airbags to go off.
Most of us have had a car on the dyno at least once in our lives, typically with a tuner behind the wheel watching its vitals and tinkering around with settings with the intentions of extracting as much power as possible from those rides. It’s an ages-old practice, one that typically isn’t terribly dramatic, save for the sound of the engine and the anticipation of seeing just how much power it’s actually making at the wheels. However, for the folks at Complete Street Performance, a routine dyno run behind the wheel of a Camaro ZL1 recently took a turn for the worse, and the whole thing was caught on camera.
Previously. this Camaro ZL1 laid down a healthy 850 horsepower on the dyno, which was enough to propel it down the quarter mile in 10.3 seconds – on run-flat tires, no doubt. Now, with a set of larger and stickier Toyos in the rear, the idea is to activate the car’s reflex controller and get it dialed in while also adding some E85 to the mix to see just how much more power can be extracted from its supercharged 6.2-liter LT4 V8.
Things start out rather well, as our host adds a bit of timing to the mix before making a run on the dyno to see the results. However, this routine outing quickly goes south when we can clearly see something explode underneath the car and burst into flames, which actually causes the airbags to go off inside the cabin as well. Luckily, the camera man is on hand to put the fire out, and our host behind the wheel is just a bit shaken up after getting a nice-sized scratch on his shoulder from some flying projectile stemming from the airbag deployment.
The Camaro ZL1 is a different story, as there’s a giant puddle of fluids on the floor from the exploding transmission, and as one might imagine, the driver is a little shaken up from the experience. He admits that he wasn’t quite sure what had happened at first, which is why it took him a second to shut the engine off. He also felt the transmission exploding into bits and smacking the floor pan, which has to have been an unsettling feeling.
On the bright side, it was obviously better that this sort of thing happen on the dyno rather than the race track, as the tranny let go at 163 mph – which could have been quite devastating. The damage also seems to have been mostly contained to the transmission and the fuel lines, and the driveshaft is even still connected to boot, which means that this incident can serve as an important reminder – always have a buddy nearby – plus a couple of fire extinguishers – any time you’re doing a dyno run.
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