6000 Hp anyone?

[E-MO]

This is way off topic here but i have to share,My buddy asks if i want to go to the drags here @ sears point? sure i said, now i have watched the drags on t.v. never have i been to an event like this & being able to go into the pit's get up close & personal with these beast's is an awesome experience.

The teams light these things off and have to "burp" the engines in order to set the clutch, the power that these things produce is incredible !
the last burp you will hear me howling like a bansheefg57 enjoy...




http://media.putfile.com/Fram-national-drags

[mikeyj86]

my Uncle races, and I got to go in the pits and see some of the Top fuel dragsters. Those engines are insane, you can feel power through the ground, absolutely incredible

[Stainless Skills]

What fuel do they run on and how many gallons do they go through in say... the time it takes to race down the track?

[CAPtain232]

They run on a very high nitro content fuel....80 to 90 percent, and go thru about $300 worth in one 1/4 mile pass

[Toro]

First, some useful info:

* One NHRA Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi
engine makes more horsepower than all the cars in
the first four rows at the Daytona 500.

* Under full throttle, a Top Fuel dragster engine
consumes 1 gallon 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 dragster's 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 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, 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 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 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 at 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 if,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 for you
bikers: 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
hard up through the gears and blast across the
starting line and past the dragster at an honest
200 mph (293 ft/sec). 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 away=20
from where you just passed him.

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

That, folks, is acceleration .

[Jim D]

The only racing engines offhand I know of that approach the same kind of power/displacement that top fuel does would be the Forumla One engines they were running right before the turbo limits followed by the turbo ban. The Renault 1.5 liter v6 was producing 1300 hp at over 16K rpm's in qualifying boost. For full races they would dial back the boost a bit to get it under 1000hp. It's amazing that these tiny engines would hold together for 1-2 hour track races, but they did. At their peak output (1300hp for 90.9 cu inches) they made 14.3 hp per cubic inch. That would equate to 7150 hp out of 500 cu in, very similar to what Top fuel is doing.

With 1300 hp availible in a 1000 lb formula 1 chassis, things were getting out of hand. Thus the turbo 'ban' came to be and they went to 3.0l normally aspirated all around.

[Supermod56]

They were flirting with 8000 HP before the NHRA started limiting the nitro content a few years ago for safety reasons, too many punctured tires/crashes, oil-downs, etc. First to 90%, and now to 85%. They burn an average of 12 gallons a run, including the burnout. If you have never seen them in person, you need to!!! Seeing a cylinder head depart the block is wild. even saw a motor come out of the car once!!

Tom

[LookNatU2]

Thats awesome kewl info TORO.. Lov drag racing.
thanks

[casey g]

the moters are like a bombs u never no when ther going to blow and the funny cars are just nuts the moter is practley in there laps lol

[bodywerks]

They develope roughly 1,000 HP per cylinder. No one knows for sure, though, because there is no dyno strong enough to measure it. Instead, they symply bolt the blower unit to a sort of dyno that measures CFM of air that it goes through at it's max RPM during a 1/4 mile run. From there, it is just math and best-guess as to the actual HP produced at the engine's flywheel.

[GremlinX]

Funny cars! Go Ron Capps!!! He's a friend of mine and a great dude... He flew my slow stick last year and loved it!

[Stainless Skills]

Sweeeeet, I love reading things like that, thats really cool stuff to know!