Drag Racing Facts

[Old-Bugga]

NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH SPEEDSTERS. Just Interesting!

Some facts and figures involved in drag racing.

One top fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Indy. 500.
Under full throttle, a top fuel dragster engine consumes 1 = 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 Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragsters 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 a stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitro methane the flame front temperature measures 7050 degrees F.
Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, disassociated 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 300mph in 4.5 seconds dragsters must accelerate at an average of over 4 G's. I order to reach 200mph well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8 G'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 red line is actually quite high at 9500 rpm.
The bottom line; assuming all equipment is paid off, the crew work for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP.each run costs an estimated $1000 per second. The current top fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the ¼ mile(05/10/03 Tony Schumacher). The top speed record is 333 mph ( 533 km/h) as measured over the last 66' of the run ( 29/09/03 Doug Kalitta)


Putting this into perspective::

You are riding the average $250.000.00 Honda Moto Gp bike. Over a mile up the road is a top fuel dragster, staged and ready to launch down a ¼ mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run your RC211V hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and past the dragster at an honest 200mph (293 ft/sec). The "tree" goes green for the both of you at that moment. The dragster launches and starts off 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 ¼ of a mile from where you just passed him.


Think about it, from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you at 200mph, and not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the track when he passed you within a mere 1320 foot long race course.

[hot66]

one of the reasons I ALWAYS go to the MAIN EVENT @ the Pod When you have a field of 9 + top fuellers the racing is superb.

Saying that, my favs are Pro Mods

[corduroyboy]

So what you're saying O-B is that the only people who can afford to go top-fuel drag racing are emergency plumbers - them being the only people who charge more per second than the racing costs!

[veryporky]

Drag racing = blinding statistics

But more like riding a bucking bronco than racing!!!

Check out the pyramid of speed:

http://www.nsxfiles.com/Pyramid_of_speed.htm

Also see posting in general chat!!!