I hear this term used occassionally (not to be confused with blowing through the converter), what does it mean and how and what causes it to happen? Most importantly, how can it be avoided?

 

I dont think I have heard that term , Other than to mean the converter went bad or cam apart

 

Yeah like someone had said on here recently that their converter blew up and threw metal peices into their trans and took it out as well. I'm trying to find the thread.

Here's one but I know that there was a more recent thread

https://ls1tech.com/forums/showthrea...er#post2798365

 

Ok it just means the converter failed is all

 

There is an inherant problem with torque converters in that if it were to "balloon" or swell up during a pass then the baerings could easily fall out of place and then it would suffer a mechanical failure. Maybe that is what they are referring to. Certainly though, if a unit is not well built it could lose a fin and that now would become shrapnell and cause a catastrpohic failure. Those are a couple of ways a converter could fail.

"Blowing through" the converter is a term that is often used in racing applications.

An example would be... say a car has a big nitrous shot and has a max rpm of 6900 rpm's. If the car was equipped with a converter that stalled at say 5500 rpms it would not take long at all for that engine to get to max rpm, meaning 100 ft out of the hole it has ran through the power band of the engine.

That car would need to have a much lower stall converter in order to maximize the full potential of the big power adder. Now if the same car was N/A that converter might do the job. Get it?

Hope that helps.

g

 

Thanks.

I know about the blowing through the converter term but your first explanation about the ballooning effect was what I was referring to.

How can the ballooning effect be minimized if it is possible at all?

 

The single best way to protect against that condition is to have a ballooning plate installed (welded) to the converter. Any reputable converter shop can do that for you and it is not expensive!

g

 

Cool, does it happen at any power level or only extreme amounts of HP?