Top Fuel Anyone?

[jeff]

A friend forwarded to me the following anecdotes about Top Fuel dragsters. I cannot vouch for their accuracy, but to anyone who has not seen them before they might make interesting reading (although you may want to overlook the American orientation).

- One Top Fuel 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first four rows (eight cars) of the Daytone 500.

- Under full throttle, a Top Fuel engine consumes 1.5 gallons of nitromethane per second. A fully-laden 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate but produces 25% less energy.

- A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive a Top Fuel supercharger.

- With 3000 cubic feet/minute of air being rammed in by the supercharger when on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form prior to ignition. At full throttle, the cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock.

- At ignition, the 1.7:1 air/nitro mixture flame front burns at 7050 degrees F.

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

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

- Sparkplug electrodes are totally consumed during a single quarter-mile pass. By halfway through a run, the engine is dieseling from compression and the glow of the 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, unburnt nitro builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block or split the block in half.

- In order to reach 300mph in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate at an average of over 4g's. In order to reach the necessary 200 mph well before the mid-point, the launch acceleration approaches 8g's.

- Dragsters reach over 300 miles an hour before you have finished reading this sentence.

- From light to light, a Top Fuel engine will turn approximately 540 revolutions.

- Including burnout, a single engine must survive only 900 revolutions under load before a rebuild.

- Assuming that all the equipment is paid for and the crew is working for free, running costs for a T.F. are roughly $1,000/second.

- To illustrate the speed of these things, imagine that you are driving a twin-turbo Lingenfelter Corvette ZO6. A mile ahead of you a Top Fuel dragster is staged and will be ready to launch down a quarter-mile strip as you pass it. You accelerate the Corvette hard and as you overtake the stationary dragster you are going 200mph. At that instant the theoretical light goes green for both cars.
As you overtake it at 200, the dragster launches. You keep the throttle flat to the floor. Within three seconds of your overtaking it, the dragster will overtake you.

Thought it would give all the Dragstrip fans something to aim at!!!!!

[SGHOM]

I had a chat with one of the stewards at the pod recently. he said the fastest time recorded there was 3.7 secs !!

Also, they consume 14 gallons of fuel in that time at a cost of £800 !! for example............ If you tipped a 2 gallon bucket up side down, you still would not get enough fuel into the engine !!

/sets reminder.............. bigger fuel pump for me leggy !!

[jeff]

Just another amazing thing I found, the reason they sound like a bag of nails on tickover is because the crank is actually 30 degrees out of sync, as under full throttle the forces are so great that is actualls bends the cam to the correct timing!!!!! Imagine setting that bugger up with a Halfords timing light!!

[Kenneth]

Timing light?

ROFL, i wouldnt go ANYWHERE near a TF engine while it was running... I have seen those pistons flying all over the place....

Thats some wicked power though... mmm more power...