Dragster facts

ModMMax

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May 8, 2005
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Midland, Ontario
I found this in a boating site I frequent. Interesting stuff. Hope you enjoy it. Hard to beleive, especially the stuff about the twin turbo corvette.

* 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 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 during a 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 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 $1,000.00 per second.
* The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.428 seconds for the quarter mile (Tony Schumacher). The top speed record is 336.00 mph (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66' of the run (Tony Schumacher).

Putting this all 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 the 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.
 

I often wondered how fast they would be going if they ran it out to 2000 feet or even a half mile. Can you imagine the speeds they would reach if than ran another 680 feet. I bet the elapsed time would still be under 5 seconds.
 
if u do the math for the record the motor only rotated 679 times in the 1/4 mile. lol thats just amazing. thats like one rotation for every 2 feet.
 
They really have NO WAY to measure horsepower,,, but the insurance companies estimate ( at least thats what the racers say ) around 8000 horsepower,,, but Bill Miller has a program that estimates between 9000 and 10,000 horsepower!!!! Nitromethane carries its OWN OXYGEN molecule and it DOESNT even need a spark to explode!!!! I have heard of guys turning over engines with a breaker bar and the nitromethane compressing in the cylinder and BLOWING the head off the motor and even blowing a guys arm off and killing another guy.. nitromethane was around $30.00 a gallon (last years prices) and has a shelf life of around a month or two ( six weeks to be exact).... My little 73 challenger makes right around 600 horsepower and every second faster that LOW TENS usually costs another TEN GRAND!!!! (unless you go with nitrous) but with the spray,, you have to make a less compression motor to keep from bending rods!!!!! Needless to say,, I MAY one of these days make a nitromethane SLED motor,,, but NEVER IN THE CHALLENGER!!!!
 


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