Top Fuel Facts

[Black02Silverado]

Not sure if these are all true, but if they are then  

 

Top Fuel Facts You don't have to be a drag racing fan to appreciate these statistics. Some Interesting Top Fuel

Dragster Facts:

 

* One dragster's 500-inch Hemi makes more horsepower then the first 8 rows at Daytona.  

 

* Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1 1/2 gallons of nitro per second, the same rate of fuel consumption as a fully loaded 747, but with 4 times the energy density.

 

* The supercharger takes more power to drive then a stock hemi makes.

 

* With nearly 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into nearly-solid form before ignition.

 

* Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock.

 

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

 

* At stoichiometric (exact) 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture (for nitro), the flame front of nitro methane measures 7050 degrees F.

 

* Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the exhaust stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water

vapor by the searing exhaust gases.

 

* 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 off it's fuel flow.

 

* If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in those cylinders and then explodes with a force that can blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or blow the block in half.

 

* Dragsters twist the crank (torsionally) so far (20 degrees in the big end of the crank) that sometimes cam lobes are ground offset from front to rear to re-phase the valve timing somewhere closer to synchronization with the pistons.

 

* To exceed 300mph in 4.5 seconds dragsters must accelerate at an average of over 4G's. But in reaching 200 mph well before 1/2 track, launch acceleration is closer to 8G's.

 

* If all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs $1000.00 per second.

 

* Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have read this sentence.  

 

* Top Fuel Engines ONLY turn 540 revolutions from light to light!

 

* The redline is actually quite high at 9500rpm.

 

* To give you an idea of this acceleration, the current TF dragster elapsed time record is 4.477 seconds for the quarter mile. This means that you could be coming across the starting line in your average Lingenfelter powered "twin-turbo" Corvette at 200 mph (on a FLYING START) and the dragster would BEAT you to the finish line FROM A DEAD STOP in a quarter mile distance!

[WEFs99]

What is the total horsepower?  It must be a WHOLE lot more than I thought.  What is meant by 540 revs between lights?  Sounds like a PTO speed  Some things like the 44 amps doesn't sound right (44k volts maybe) but it's got to take some terrifying HP to do what they do.

[Wingnut]

Last I heard, they cranked out around 8000 ponies. But I'm not into racing, so I'm no authority.

 

I have a hard time believing that the crank twists 20 degrees without snapping....Thats a L.F. way.

[WEFs99]

That's the HP figure I heard also.

[antig24]

:thumb:  

[The SPEEDY]

* The supercharger takes more power to drive then a stock hemi makes.

 I think it is around 500 hp.  

 

Here is another:  The green flame that is sometimes seen coming out off the headers is actually the pistons being burned.

[Firetiger(MN)]

Another neat fact is the exhaust pressure is so great that if one cylinder goes out during the run down the track, the loss in pressure can cause the car to move quickly to that side since the pressure isn't equal side to side.

[Kania2k1]

I've heard the 1000hp per cylinder also.  Cool post though!!!

[tmf6902]

I checked on google, and most websites say "over 6000" horses, so that probably means 6001

[doverarjim]

I'm not sure about the 540 revs between the lights until you put the calculator to it and if the engine turns 9000rpm and to make it work better we run 5.0 sec time 9000/60 = 150 revs per second times the 5.0 seconds to make the pass 5.0X 150= 750 revs per pass!!!!!  This does seem like a very low number but some one else can set us straight if we are wrong.  The first time I read the post I thought that it was refuring to the rearend gears being 5:40 which I also thought was a little low.