We’ve seen a lot of explosions in our day here at Dragzine, but this one definitely takes the cake on turbocharger explosions. 1320 Video was filming on location in Albuquerque, New Mexico recently, where they found this Fox Body Mustang packing an LSX (of all things) under the hood and a Comp 88mm turbocharger to supply some extra power. The car was estimated to dyno right over 950 horsepower with the latest transmission and cylinder head updates that the owner recently finished. Turbochargers spin at thousands of revolutions per minute (RPM) and they’re under a lot of stress and fatigue but what happens to this turbocharger is definitely something that we have never seen!

As you hear the boost push through the motor and the Mustang starts accelerating harder as it moves down track, you’ll see a shower of sparks fly from underneath the car. You can hear the track’s announcer proclaim, “It looks like he lost a driveshaft.” At the end of the day, the poor driver was only wishing that his repairs would be that easy to fix. In the post-run interview, the driver gives some information about the car and said they were pushing right at 23 pounds of boost on that particular run when the turbo decided that it had enough.

All parts are going to fail at sometime, we as racers and gearheads all have learned that sometime through our life. But after watching this video, this is one of the main reasons why we strongly tell everyone about the turbo blankets and protective covers. Yes, they’re heavy and not the best looking pieces on the market but they keep all the internals harnessed inside a blanket. This driver was very lucky that he didn’t lose a tire and end up totaling his entire car due to one small piece of metal that came out of the carnage.