Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests 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 density.

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

* 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 nitro methane measures
7050 degrees F.

* Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white
flame seen above the exhaust 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 off 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 crank) that sometimes
cam lobes are ground offset from front to rear to re-
phase the valve timing somewhere closer to syn-
chronization 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!

That all sounds quite amazing, but I really only understood a few Me = dumbass in science and anything related.

That rocks!

Quote:

---

* 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 off it's fuel flow.

---

All this gave me a new appreciation when watching some of the eliminations at Route 66 today. Now I understand why "a cylinder going out" is so common and lasts the rest of the run (and usually results in a loss).

It still amazes me that the engines turn less than 1000 revolutions during an entire run.

And that those guys actually feather the throttle to get out of trouble - imagine feathering thousands of horsepower *just enough* to keep the tires hooked. I can't do that in my car without completely blowing a run.

Thanks for the info.

In short, weld a Saturn V rocket booster to the back of your car, shove sticks of TNT in the cylinders of your V6 and for the coup d'tat, smoosh C4 in your fuel tank.

Add one match to the equation and voila!, you've your very own dragster on a budget (immolating driver not included)...

What flat-out amazes me is their ability to build something that runs on the edge of destruction just long enough to give the drivers a chance at making record-breaking runs.




Wile E. Coyote and his Acme Rockets have got NOTHIN' on modern-day dragsters.