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Hy Used Dynamite To "Pull" Car Engine
When David Curtis took an early 1980's Cadillac to a junk yard to scrap it, they wouldn't take it because he didn't have the title.
"They told me that without the title, they couldn't lawfully take the car unless the engine was removed from it," says David. "The law is designed to make it more difficult for thie
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Hy Used Dynamite To "Pull" Car Engine FARM HOME Cars 28-6-37 When David Curtis took an early 1980's Cadillac to a junk yard to scrap it, they wouldn't take it because he didn't have the title.
"They told me that without the title, they couldn't lawfully take the car unless the engine was removed from it," says David. "The law is designed to make it more difficult for thieves to sell stolen cars at scrap yards."
His son tried using a torch to cut the engine out of the car, even turning it upside down with a front-end loader to make it easier to get at the engine mounts. However, something caught on fire and before long the entire car was on fire. "It was a big smoking mess," says David.
They smothered the fire by dumping dirt onto the car.
They used 10 sticks of dynamite in the engine area with the car upside down, putting five sticks on each side of the frame rails. The sticks of dynamite were connected together with Primacord so they would go off at the same time. The scrap yard wouldn't take the car with an enclosed gas tank on it so they used dynamite to get rid of the tank, too.
To reduce the noise and force of the blast, they used the loader to dump a pile of clay on top of the car again. Then they lit the fuse. The blast cut the car in half, separating the front part from the rear, and sent the engine flying. "The funniest part was that a column of fire and smoke 60 to 80 ft. in diameter immediately shot about 200 ft. up into the air. It even had a mushroom cloud on top of it," says David.
After the explosion, they loaded the two halves of the car onto a trailer and hauled it to the scrap yard.
David, who is a licensed dynamite blaster, says he doesn't recommend this idea to anyone who isn't licensed to blast dynamite. "I use dynamite to make irrigation ditches deeper, to remove big rocks from dirt roads, on beaver dams, and so on," he notes.
Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, David K. Curtis, 1613 North Perry Park Rd., Sedalia, Colo. 80135 (ph 303 688-4285).
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