Strapping a car to the dyno is a good way to get an idea of how much horsepower you are making. For today’s fuel injected cars, it is also essential to tuning the complicated air and fuel mixtures. A dyno run is no more stressful on a car than just giving it some throttle, but because of the tinkering and tuning, there’s a bit more risk of detonation and spectacular explosions than on any back road run.

When the exploding dyno run happens to involve an exotic car like say, the Shelby GT500, the videos have a tendency to go viral. We came across just such a video of the “Blue Diamond” GT500.

This car has been on YouTube before, testing at over 800 horsepower at the wheels. It sounds absolutely sick, and has a lot of modifications to back up that grunt. The extensive modification list includes a 2.8 liter Kenne Bell supercharger, heat exchanger, 3:73 gears, as well as extensive suspension and cooling mods. All of this was done on a stock 5.4 liter block, which is where the explosion comes in.

Now the owner of this car even admits on YouTube that this GT500 was run hard. We’re glad to see that some of the people who can afford these cars take the time to properly flog them after Many, many dyno runs, drag racing, road course racing” and other high intensity events, apparently a rod bolt finally blew loose.

Of course, just listening to the video, it also sounds like that engine got revved a bit too high, probably putting that extra strain on the rod bolts, causing it to break. It was quite the spectacular breakage, with flames and smoke and a big bump. A shame it happened to such a great car, but the owner seems upbeat and ready to rebuild the engine bigger and badder before.