I heard an old yarn where a hotrodder blew through a small town and shattered all the plate glass on that street. Is there/could there be ANY truth to that?
No…That’s urban legend fantasy…After all, store-fronts survive truck Jake-braking everyday…
Not likely.
Unless it were a top fuel dragster ( have you attended a drag race event ? The concussion of top fuel dragster’s nitro-methane exhaust is quite an exhilarating feeling ), even fully open exhaust pipes of a regular engine would be highly unlikely.
Probable perhaps on a narrow street with buildings in close proximity, but only within very narrow perameters of conditions.
I would consider limited glass breakage a probability, all depending, but I don’t buy a car taking out everything along the street.
A guy that used to run a car lot across from my shop had a Suburban and he chucked 8500 dollars worth of amps and speakers into the back end. You could actually see all of that glass in the back quivering and even appearing to bulge when he had the stereo on and that glass never shattered; although granted, it’s a different type of glass.
Define hot rodder. I’ve seen a few '32 Coupe hot rods with straight open pipes (one on each exhaust port) on a bored, stroked, and supercharged big block that could probably break a window or two if he tried on a narrow street.