interesting top fuel dragster facts

[$heepy]

Some interesting Top Fuel dragster facts
Pretty interesting stuff here!

Some interesting Top Fuel dragster facts:

* One dragster's 500-inch Hemi makes more horsepower then the first 8
rows at Daytona

* Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1 1/2 gallons of
nitro per second, the same rate of fuel consumption as a fully loaded
747 but with 4 times the energy volume.

* The supercharger takes more power to drive then a stock hemi makes.

* Even with nearly 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the
supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into nearly-
solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic
lock.

* Dual magnetos apply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output
of an arc welder in each cylinder.

* At stoichiometric (exact) 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture (for nitro), the
flame front of nitromethane measures 7050 degrees F.

* Nitromethane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above
the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from
atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases.

* Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After 1/2
way, the engine is dieseling from compression-plus the glow of
exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by
cutting of it's fuel flow.

* If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds
up in those cylinders and then explodes with a force that can blow
cylinder heads off the block in pieces or blow the block in half.

* Dragsters twist the crank (torsionally) so far (20 degrees in the
big end of the track) that sometimes cam lobes are ground offset from
front to rear to re-phase the valve timing somewhere closer to
synchronization with the pistons.

* To exceed 300mph in 4.5 seconds dragsters must accelerate at an
average of over 4G's. But in reaching 200 mph well before 1/2 track,
launch acceleration is closer to 8G's.

* If all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for
once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs $1000.00 per second.

* Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have read this
sentence.

* Top Fuel Engines ONLY turn 540 revolutions from light to light!

* The redline is actually quite high at 9500rpm

* To give you an idea of this acceleration, the current TF dragster
elapsed time record is 4.477 seconds for the quarter mile. This means
that you could be coming across the starting line in your average
Lingenfelter powered "twin-turbo" Corvette at 200 mph (on a FLYING
START) and the dragster would BEAT you to the finish line FROM A DEAD
STOP in a quarter mile distance!

i read this on another forum and thought you guys may be as interested in it as i was.

 

[aaron.blake]

yeah they make about 7000hp+

ow and when top fuelers do their burnouts they only use 1% throttle

 

[Shing]

Thanks for the intersting info. I never knew there was so much to dragsters.

Especially
"Even with nearly 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the
supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into nearly-
solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic
lock."

 

[wogtaz ryder]

Thats some cool stuff!

* Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After 1/2
way, the engine is dieseling from compression-plus the glow of
exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by
cutting of it's fuel flow.

 

[$heepy]

i like the bit how the cam shafts are machined off center for the power of the engine to twist them to the right position. its quite spectacular that they can measure the amount of flex in the engine

 

[mattbombers]

wow:O 1 1/2 gallons of nitro!!! per second!!