lenco failure

went out testing our tad last weekend and had a trans failure that is somewhat puzzling.we had our roots setup on car as we were relicensing a driver.on the 5 th pass the car launched ok and went 50ft and the motor went to the moon.i thought the diff went but not so.the second section planet set literally exploded into dust almost and blew pieces through the case.this is an almost new 34 percent set.the sprags look good no roll over.only thing was two of the burnouts were real weak.almost like a bit of tire shake pattern on track.has anybody had this happen or have any ideas.
thanks

 

Did the pieces from the planetary set look like they shattered or can you see signs of excessive wear on the teeth? It sounds like the gear set got through without being hardened or they were too hard.

 

neutral??

It is possible that you found "neutral." Years back we had a very, very bad year...everywhere we went the thing would go 60ft then go to the moon causing, as you can imagine, a whole lot of mess.

To remedy this, we built a reverse lockout lever that was bolted to the reverser case and then after backing up from the burnout and back in fwd gear, a crew member just reached down and flipped it over so that even if he/she tried, the driver couldn’t get it into reverse. Problem solved. What was happening was the acceleration was throwing the lever back a little and found a neutral spot...a very bad thing.

What we do on our TAFC now is flip the reverser case over so that it's upside down, which makes pulling the lever back fwd gear, and pushing it fwd makes it reverse, so it can't use the weight of the handle to try and go into that neutral spot.

 

We did the same, as did most of the funny cars back in the day. i beleve Jungel Jim was the first to do it.

 

Use the reverser without neutral. 100% failsafe.

 

Nathan, I have always wondered about the reverser doing just that. I never thought of turning it over. I will now.

 

Thanks to everyone for the replies.I think we found the issue.Mike was talking about cracks in the ring gear and that appears to be it.i found some dark spots in the pieces which indicate cracks.There eas not much left of anything to know 100 percent for sure,just get out the cheque book suck it up and call the lenco boys.