| Dragster Facts
Lifted from "another forum"
"Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed
reading this sentence.
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 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 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.
Top Fuel Engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to
light!
Including the burnout the engine must only survive 900 revolutions
under load.
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).
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."  | 
02-Jan-2005, 11:45 
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