(Photo credit: Eddyville Raceway Park FB Page) – If you are a fan of alcohol funny cars you know the name Dale Brand. For many years he was a very strong racer on the IHRA circuit and when that dried up he switched his combo to an NHRA style setup and has been doing a great job on that side of things, defeating Frank Manzo at an NHRA divisional race at Cordova earlier this summer. That being said, even a guy like Brand who races a 3,000hp alky flopper needs to just get out to the strip and have some fun every once in a while. He recently took his old bracket car, a 1968 Charger to Eddyville Raceway Park just to make some laps and enjoy the night. Brand had not raced this particular car in 20+ years, so he was probably as surprised as anyone when he dropped the hammer in the burnout box, exploding the engine in amazing fashion.
The photo below shows the resulting carnage and it is totally epic in scale. We have seen lots of blown up engines in our day, but this one looks like someone stuffed it with dynomite and lit the fuse. There’s the crank, rods, even pistons showing. The only thing that kept the whole mass of the bottom end from smashing to the Earth was the front few bolts in the oil pan. Had the pan rails broken up front, it may have shot the crank and all of its associated components right out the bottom!
