facts to blow your minds...

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 1-1/2 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 (stoichiometry: methodology and technology by which quantities of reactants and products in chemical reactions are determined) 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 ½ 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 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 redline is actually quite high at 9500rpm.


* 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 $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.


That folks, is acceleration.

...and yes, i stole this from somewhere other than rrw.

 

Acceleration still trips my trigger. I was out on my dragster last night, in the coolish Florida air. It is a total trip ripping from stoplight to stoplight. Mine might do 10's with a good rider, I can't even imagine that kind of muscle...

I wish I could hop in one of those, even for a back seat ride. Guess not though, I can't even come up with a seconds worth right now!

 

Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence

*Drool*

 

WOW

 

I second that!

 

I read a while ago that the drivers of top fuel dragsters have relatively short careers because the acceleration of the "cars" have the ability to detach the drivers retina.......I dont know if this is true or not buy I thought it was pretty gnarly none the less.

Did I just gnarly ??????

 

And then after that amazing exhiliration of 4.5 seconds you get to go back to the pits and work on the car for the next two hours to get it ready for the next 4.4 seconds of fury!

The cars are amazing and the thrill would surely be intense but I for one ain't down with working my @ss of for 4.5 seconds of FUN!

Oh and before any of you try to flame me! VERY FEW of you would be willing either. Hell most of you cry about having to drain the water out of the bike on one of those particularly cold nights!

DRAG RACING SUCKS.

 

why not just use rockets you could get the same power with less maint.

 

A suckage apprentice?


I know I enjoy racing/riding/THE BUZZ more than wrenching, but I still like to fiddle about with mechanical things. Tear downs are always a blast. Rebuilding is cool too, until you find an o-ring with no apparent home. Then you think, did it come from this tear down or from another bike?

 

LOL! I had that happen after rebuilding some carbs on a FZR400. After the cursing stopped, I started to tear them back apart one at a time....

 

cool facts..

I dig all motoracing. next time youre at a T/F drag race goto about half track and you can see them with the front wheels still in the air, bowing the chassis as the rear wheels are trying to pass the front in a straight line! next, goto the finish line and see if you can even focus on the machine when it gets right in front of you. it is alot of work for just a few seconds though but can you imagine? those T/F drag"bikes" aint too shabby either. road racers aint got nuthin on them boyz. those are the ONLY machines that scare me and I'll race anything!

Drag racing also has the coolest paint jobs in all motoracing.

/////

oh yeah, Ive allways thought that a pass in a T/F car would be intensly theroputic (sp?) due to the incredible vibrations, sorta like an extream massage that penitrates every cell of your body. hell, get close enough to the track and youll get a massage from it! its WILD! vision blurrs too so I can understand how the drivers could possibly get a detached retina!

Ive you have never been to one of these events, its something all motorheads should experience before they die.

 

Sure.

Fine.

I'm impressed.

Butt, THEY don't even turn left...

(you guys crack me up)

 

i think i am reading that same book that all came from...

 

One of my best friends Danny Dunn races IHRA Top Fuel and the experience of being up close to that kind of power is amazing!

The funny thing is when he found out that I had started roadracing, he said he thought I was nuts. OOOHHH the irony.

 

Please tell me you are joking...

Really your joking right???

Put 24 Dragracers on the track at one time. Launch 'em then tell 'em to get it slowed down enough to NOT kill each other as they try to make the turn at the end of the straight!

Then tell them to do a 14 turn road course. Oh and tell them to WIN they have to do it 28 times with each of those lap times being faster than any man had EVER done a lap on that course before. THAT'S WHAT VALENTINO ROSSI DOES!

DRAG RACING SUCKS! And drag racers rank up there with bowlers and billiards players as far as I am concerned. They are very talented at what they do and God knows I could never reach their level of expertise but gimme a break...Valentino flushes more talent down the toilet every time he takes a piss than they have in their ENTIRE body!

 

APE, if we have to 'splain it to you, you would never get it anyway... Lemme give it a try since you are trying so hard to be a tardee with all this suckage practice.


IMHO, it ain't about the driver and any perceived skill level. They have trouble making the single left or right at the end of the 1/4 mile! It's about the machine. That machine is just plain excessive in every measure. Excessive HP, excessive tasty bits, excessive noise, excessive speed, excessive cost and excessive measures to get it to run straight down the track after lighting the fuse. It's all about how fast you can make it go without becoming airborn.

HTH.

 

facts to blow your minds

Humm lets see how fast we can get it over with......I just don't get it .......yes motors are impressive grenades that have a life span of about 5 seconds ..........this is impressive

 

Sure you fellas aren't them fancy pants kinda guys? Only way I can see why ya can't appreciate pure, raw, screaming HP. Not tryin' to knock yer manhood, just tryin' ta help ya find it...

 

I used to hit the NHRA events up in Sanair just outside Montreal. This was in the days before they got into the 4's with ET's. To see, hear, and feel two of these things going down a track is just amazing . 40,000 people in grandstands that are shaking like mad. Pit rebuilds are cool to watch and when they fire them up, it's deafening and your eyes start watering from the nitromethane. Brilliant.
Cheers, Lee S.

 

Dude, let's open up the mind a little, eh??
Seriously, the car stuff doesn't do much for me either, but top fuel bikes are sick, sick weapons. Gotta be one warped individual to get on one of them. One of the world's best top fuel engine builders, Carl Ahfeldt, has his shop here in OKC. Hanging out down there and listening to him is a real treat. I spend most of my time in mouth-shut/ears-open mode, which is the opposite of the way I normally operate. You can see the bike he builds here: http://www.ronwebb.com/
Really cool, really interesting machinery.