Thread: Unbelievable facts

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 Top Fuel dragster engine consumes 1½ gallons of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy being produced.

A stock Dodge 426 cubic inch (7.0 litre) Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the top fuel dragster's supercharger.

With 3000 (CFM) Cubic Feet per Minute 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 nitro methane the flame front temperature measures 7050 degrees F (3899 degrees C).

Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapour 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 (760 degrees C). 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 300mph (483kph) in 4.5 seconds dragsters must accelerate at an average of over 4G's. In order to reach 200mph (322kph) well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8G's.

Dragsters reach over 300mph (483kph) before you have completed reading this sentence.

Top Fuel Engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from green light to cut off! This one’s confusing, but stop & ponder the fact that the engine is only used for aprox 4 to 5 seconds.

Including the burnout the engine can only survive 900 revolutions under load. The red-line is 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 $USD1,000.00 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 (536 km/h) as measured over the last 66 feet (20 metres) of the run (09/28/03 Doug Kalitta).


Putting all of this into perspective:
You are riding the average $250,000 Honda MotoGP bike. 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 RC211V MotoGP bike hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and past the dragster at an honest 200 mph (322kph). The 'tree' goes green for both of you at that moment. The dragster launches and starts after you. You keep your wrist cranked 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 (402metres) away from where you just passed him.

Not all of that is true or worded correctly.

Nitro methane burns yellow WHEN compressed. In the atmosphere it can be burning without visible effects.

To say a stock 426 dodge can't produce enuf pwr to drive a top fueller's blower is not quite the way it goes. Nearly any blower can be fitted to any V8 but wether the BLOWER is suited to the V8 is a different story. Max compression vs available fuel/air intake, along with waste emissions exit rate are all big factors here. Nearly ANY motor has the power to spin a blower pully, it's just that that as the engine rpm's get higher, the blower creates a greater induction force & greater compression, which on the wrong motor can cause the motor to stall, making it unable to perform.

44 amps is enough to cause the plug's electrode to weld itself together but it doesn't spark for long enough to do this.

The G-force stats r a little exaggerated. 8 G's would kill you unless u had sub gravitational stability (I think it's called) in the vehicle.

Both aussie & US dragsters have done over 510KM/H here at Kwinana.

They last a bit longer than 900 revolutions. Most dragsters I know of reach between 9,000 & 11,000 RPM, & can peak in a second. Thats between 750 & 916 revolutions over a 5sec period. The burnout, for a top fueller is purely to get the tyres hot & sticky. They don't usually redline during the burnout, but often reach over 8000RPM. The burnout lasts for up to 4 secs. That's up to 533 revolutions just there. The difference is trivial tho, when comparing it to ya average falcon or commodore that lasts 3-400,000km before needing a rebuild.

Other than that the rest of it is quite true.

What is also quite interesting, which I will post if I can find it, is the average stat's for reaction times for a top fueller in comparison to a super street or street car. I held the record for a while at kwinana for the quickest reaction time in a manual street car under 300Flywheel/HP @ 0.479 sec.

That was yrs ago. It's prob been broken since. Don't worry about the 14.9sec pass, I was going for green light reaction times only that day as it was a 43deg track temp

Very interesting.... Now to be able to shoe horn one of those in a ski...

Just build the ski around the motor. You'd only need to idle it & you'd be 1st to the finish line, if u could hang on that long, given that they idle in a surging manner as a characterstic result of the lumpy high duration cam they need to reach such high RPM.

Hey Chookc, speakin of unbelievable facts, u seem to have thrashed my post tally again . Your daily average must be 3+ right now eh?