Chad will be able to give you more but here’s a few interesting facts about a top fuel dragster:
With nearly 3000 CFM of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into nearly a 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)
The supercharger takes more power to drive than a sprint car motor makes
Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After ½ way, the engine is dieseling form compression-plus the glow of the exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F
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 track) that sometimes cam lobes are ground offset from front to rear to re-phase the valve timing somewhere closer to synchronization with the pistons
A top fuel engine performs an average of 616 revolutions per run
Under full throttle, an engine consumes 1 and ½ gallons of nitro per second, the same rate of fuel as a fully loaded 747 but with 4 times the energy volume
One top fuel dragster makes more horsepower than the first 8 rows at the NASCAR Daytona 500
The engine can only be shut down by cutting off the fuel flow
If a F1 race car hit the start line at a speed of 320kph a top fuel car will beat it over the ¼ mile
Dragsters reach over 480kph before you can read this sentence
If all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free and nothing blows up, each run costs about $1000.00 per second
Topic: Ask "The Chad" (Read 849 times)
