Ferrari 456GT Test Drive/Blown Engine

Ron Andersen

Ron Andersen

Joined
Mar 23, 2000
Messages
3,769
Hey Guys,

I received a very cool 30 second video clip yesterday from a fellow car nut that shows a Ferrari 456GT (a $250,000 car) being driven on a race track at the upper end of its capacity. The Ferrari test driver was fully lighting up the tires several times for long stretches while swinging out the rear end. Then, when he slows to a stop, you see an explosion from under the hood while mass amounts of smoke quickly billows out. It also has great sound effects of the engine screaming and the tires screeching.

Below is a series of pictures of the engine blowing (click on thumbnail for a larger image). This series of pictures covers only about 2-3 seconds of the 30 second video. It was quite impetuously explosive.

If you wish to view the 1.3 meg file I've described, CLICK HERE to download it from a site where I found it (BTW, if you look at the list of videos that guy has, there's some very interesting ones there!...the Alaska Fishing one was amazing!). If that link to the video goes unavailable, let me know and I'll email the file to you.

 
Centaur said:
What a putz! Abusing a quality machine like that.
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I don't know if you listened to the reporter on the video, but the driver is employeed by Ferrari as a test driver. He gets paid to drive them all day "to their destruction."
 
Workin for my pop at his automotive upholstery shop, I helped push many a Ferrari and Lamborghini into his shop, blown motors and faulty electrical systems seemed to be the norm.
 
Centaur said:
What a putz! Abusing a quality machine like that.
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Ferrari's are made to be driven. I can't stand it when people buy a nice car with tons of horsepower and drive it around like a little old lady.

Stomp on that pedal! :)
 
Ron Anderson said:
I don't know if you listened to the reporter on the video, but the driver is employeed by Ferrari as a test driver. He gets paid to drive them all day "to their destruction."
Click to expand...

I didn't listen to the audio, so I was not aware of that. Where can I sign up for that job? :p


Fisher of Men said:
Ferrari's are made to be driven. I can't stand it when people buy a nice car with tons of horsepower and drive it around like a little old lady.

Stomp on that pedal! :)
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There's a big difference between using a machine to it's designed ability, and abusing it. IMHO, what was on the video was abuse. A quality engineered machine like that should last for decades when properly maintained and not abused.

Drive like a little old lady? Ever listed to any Jan & Dean tunes? :)
 
He's a test driver. They are meant to drive the vehicles hard. Abuse? Maybe, definately a good driver. When testing a vehicle I would hope they do exactly this kind of driving. I seen this show and he gave an awesome test drive in a top end machine. Its cool to see someone that really knows how to make a machine perform at 100, or in this case 110% of capacity.

Of course my motto is : Drive it like you stole it. :D


Paul
 
There's a great scene from an old Walter Mathau movie, The New Leaf. He's a rich playboy. The movie opens with him waiting fretfully in an immaculate waiting room. A gowned, masked fellow comes in, looking very serious. He says to Mathau, "It's carbon on the valves, sir. We keep telling you to keep it above 3000 RPM."

All through the first part of the movie he's flogging his Ferrari around, with the thing coughing and sputtering.
 
There's a new car on the market the swedish Koenigsegg the highest speed of any production car , 242 mph !!!!!
 
I'm pretty usre that is a clip fromt he british car show Top Gear...I'll have to go through my Top Gear clips and find it...it was the intro to an episode they did on ferraris. The guy tests all the new cars to torture test them and discover their limits...i guess he found the limits on this one!


I see this clip pop up on websites a couple of times a year, and i never get sick of it...
 
Most manufacturers push samples of their products well-beyond specification and all the way to failure. You simply have to know what happens when the product fails. An automobile manufacturer needs to know if, for example, when the engine does blow, if bits and pieces get sent through the firewall and possibly into the passenger compartment and/or passengers. Manufacturers do need to know what happens when products get pushed beyond reasonable and proper use and what happens when they do fail.

You'll find that every automobile manufacturer has a test track facility and professional drivers paid to drive the car to extremes and to destruction.

This isn't unique to cars either. If you can find it, rent or by a video called "Twenty First Century Jet." This video chronicles the design of the Boeing 777. One of the great sections is the testing of the finish aircraft. In one test, the plane is loaded with pallets of bricks to several times its rated weight capacity. Despite the huge overload, the plane must first take off. They show some close-ups of the landing gear. The shocks are completely bottomed out and the tires are bulging under the weight. There's very little air between the wheels and the rubber. But, they manage to taxi out to the runaway and take off. Next, they must climb above the plane's maximum rated altitude. That takes quite a bit of effort. Then, they have to land this way-overloaded plane and bring it to a stop within its minimum rated landing distance. They are not allowed to blow a tire until after the plane is stopped or they fail the test. Once the plane is stopped, the rules of the test do not allow the pilots to exit for something like five minutes and nobody is allowed to go near the plane for five minutes. To stop the plane that heavy in that space requires absolute maximum braking and literally sets the brake pads on fire. Meanwhile, the tires are also burning up. So, the landing gear are literally engulfed in flames by the end of the five minutes when the fire crews can move in. But, the plane has to survive.

They do another test in which the plane is literally wenched up into the air something like 20 feet and then just dropped.

Even the computer you're using now had have all its fans (well, not the one you're using, but a sample of the same model) disabled, all of its vents blocked, and be put in an oven to -- I think ? -- 70C and "operate" (it doesn't actually have to work correctly, but be turned on) without any fire.
 
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