Interesting Top fuel dragster facts

[JerzyIroc]

Top Fuel Dragster motors are quite possible the most amazing racing engines in existence. If you are not convinced by the time you get through these facts, you will be!

* One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Daytona 500.
* Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1½ gallons of nitromethane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced.
* A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster supercharger.
* With 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.
* At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitromethane the flame front temperature 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.
* Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.
* 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 the fuel flow.
* If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half.
* In order to exceed 300 mph in 4.5 seconds dragsters must accelerate at an average of over 4G’s. In order to reach 200 mph well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8G’s.
* Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence.
* Top Fuel Engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light!
* Including the burnout the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load.
* The red-line is actually quite high at 9500 rpm.

The Bottom Line; Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimated US $1,000.00 per second. The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter mile (10/05/03, Tony Schumacher). The top speed record is 333.00 mph (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66′ of the run (09/28/03 Doug Kalitta).
Putting all of this into perspective:
You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter “twin-turbo” powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a Top Fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down a quarter mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the ‘Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and past the dragster at an honest 200 mph. The ‘tree’ goes green for both of you at that moment. The dragster launches and starts after you. You keep your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums and within 3 seconds the dragster catches and passes you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter mile away from where you just passed him.

Think about it, from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 mph and not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1320 foot long race course

http://sportscarnet.com/blog/2008/09...uel-dragsters/

[jims69camaro]

this is as old as the records stated. lots of things have changed since then, most notably that they are shutting the motor down at the 1000' mark now. imagine all of the acceleration needed to run the 1/4 mile has already been made by the 1000' mark. this leads to fewer catastrophic failures, saves on equipment and fewer fires for the driver to jump out of once he gets the car to a full stop.

[NJSPEEDER]

People are still blowing up motors on the shorter track, it isn't saving anyone anything. The first round of qualifying after the new rules, kaboom. Same old song and dance.

All they have managed to do is create the appearance that something was done, when in fact, the engines are still being pushed to the limits because the point is to win and they will twist the equipment as hard as the rules allow to get that wally.

They need to cut the BS and send them back to quarter mile racing. Start doing things to ensure the engines will actually stay together, start taking away blower and nitro.

[GrandmasterCow]

hah awsome

[jims69camaro]

reduce blower boost and cut back nitro, all you'll do is keep people from hitting 300+ mph... the rule was to save the motors, but if they're still blowing them up... idk.

[NJSPEEDER]

The thing that it seems like they missed in their rush to judgement is that the overwhelming majority of serious injuries and accidents in fuel cars over the years have been the result of engine failures.

Scott's wreck and subsequent death was the results of a massive blower explosion, Shelly Anderson missed most of a season a few years ago after getting burned from a horrific blower explosion in her dragster, even going back to Shirley Muldowney suffered the worst injuries of her carreer from a blower backfire.

The engine is also, by far, the most expensive part of a fuel car. Between maintenence and replacement the costs run into the tens of thousands of dollars per weekend.

If they refine the rules to keep the engines together it makes things safer for the drivers, saves strapped team owners a few bucks, and lower costs encourages teams with borderline budgets to give it a shot in the top classes.

The big teams will still find a way to spend the money, but at least they will be spending it to actually develop the car instead of throwing unreliable power at the same old, slow evolving chassis.

-Tim

[jims69camaro]

1/8th mile tracks? i know the blower is the culprit to many injuries. but take away the blower and all of a sudden the races won't be that exciting anymore. it'll be like watching paint dry. so all of this money that is spent keeps things on the edge of disaster all of the time. take away the money and you won't have racing at all.

the shame of it is that people who are truly addicted to speed (hmm, john force comes to mind) that have out-grown their class and want to move up, can't. take away the money and they will truly be stagnant.

[NJSPEEDER]

That was one fo the fears when they took away the propitch and screw blowers in the early 90's, it took the mad scientists 1 season to start breaking all the records again.

Reduce boost and give them back the RPM and gears they had before. The cars will not slow down much and they won't stay slowed down for long. A little drop in power would actually make the cars a bit easier to hook and drive drive too, could make for some ET gains.

-Tim

[sweetbmxrider]

wow awesome!

[SteveR]

Originally Posted by JerzyIroc

* The red-line is actually quite high at 9500 rpm.

These numbers are a few years old. The redline was dropped to 8950 about 4 years ago.