The Ford Shelby GT500 Mustang is unquestionably one of the most impressive American muscle cars ever built and in this viral video circulating the pages of every social media site – one such GT500 is shown annihilating a portable dyno.
This video that has brought so much attention to this Shelby GT500 Super Snake Convertible destroying a dyno at the Quebec Expo Performance 24 starts off with the car in question beginning a dyno run only to be stopped by someone watching from the sidelines just 19 seconds in. Something is adjusted behind the driver’s side rear wheel and as the video skips forward, the crew continues on with the testing. About 40 seconds into the video, everything seems to be going well when the driver of the GT500 continues to crank up the RPM but at the 56 second mark – it all goes very, very wrong.
At that point, the portable dyno under the back end of this Shelby GT500 literally explodes with a shower of sparks flying from the right of the screen. This is where you would find all of the bearings and internal workings of this type of dyno so it has been widely speculated that the supercharged Shelby Mustang just pumped too much power into the dyno and the bearings of the rollers which absorb the force from the tires just could not keep up. When the bearings failed, the shower of sparks was caused by the rollers under the wheels locking up and when that happened, the supercharged muscle car literally tossed the dyno out from under itself. From the look of things, there was very significant damage to both the dyno (which was likely scrap after this was all said and done) as well as the high priced Shelby Mustang.
I hunted around the internet a bit, looking for more information on this incredible video and I was able to find another video showing the same GT500 dyno explosion from a different angle. In the description of that video, the poster claims that the Mustang was making 920 horsepower when the dyno disintegrated. That kind of power on a portable dyno (especially one that is either a bit worn out or improperly set up) is well capable of causing the type of damage that we see handed out in these two videos. Unfortunately, the same video that claims that this GT500 made 920 horsepower also claims that it was going 512kmh on the dyno and the suggestion that this Mustang was traveling the equivalent of 318 miles per hour hurts the credibility of any information included. However, this second, newer video still gives us another great look at the carnage as it happens.
Fortunately, it appears as though the safety straps managed to keep the Mustang GT500 in place when the dyno failed and that prevented the car from rocketing forward into the crowd of people watching this dyno run in person. In fact, the car barely moved at all even though the dyno on which is was parked scattered pieces out from under the car. While it had to have been a scary situation in person – I bet that it was one hell of a show.
Image was captured from the YouTube video posted by Yan Yaya