Top Fuel Dragster Statistics

[Braeden320 0]

Thought some may be interested..Bloody amazing really!

1) Under full throttle a Top Fuel engine consumes 1.5 gallons or 8 litres of nitro methane per second.

2) A fully loaded 747 jet consumes jet fuel at the same rate but with 25% less energy being produced.

3) A stock 426 Hemi cannot produce enough power to drive the dragsters supercharger.

4) With 3000cfm of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the air/fuel mixture is compressed into near solid form before ignition.

5) Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.

6) At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitro methane the flame front measures 7050deg F.

7) Nitro methane burns yellow.

8] The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gasses.

9) Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each sparkplug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.

10) Sparkplug electrodes are totally destroyed during a pass.

11) After half way the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of the exhaust valves at 1400deg F.

12) Cutting the fuel flow can only shut the engine down.

13) If spark momentarily fails early in a run the unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinders & then explodes with sufficient force to blow the heads off the block in pieces or split the block in two.

14) In order to exceed 300mph in 4.5 seconds a dragster must accelerate at an average of 4 G's.

15) In order to reach 200mph well before half track the launch approaches 8 G's.

16) Top Fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light.

17) Including the burnout, a Top Fuel engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load.

18] The redline is actually quite high at 9500rpm.

19) The bottom line is: Assuring all the equipment is paid off, the crew work for free & for once nothing blows up, each run costs around $1000 per second.

[Cale 36]

Amazing.

On the topic, who saw the dragster split in two in Australia a few days ago, the guy got away with only a cut on his hand or something!

[edit] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiF2KHDXXZ8

Edited September 18, 2007 by Quailboy

[Gus 5]

wow..thats badass!

[steve R 0]

seen this before, you forgot the part about a covert zo6 passing a topfuel dragster on the start line of a quarter mile at 200mph and still accelerating, and at the exact moment the ZO6 passes the dragster, it launches and will beat the ZO6 to the finish

[StylesM5 0]

Wow. Got any specs on the gearbox, diff and tyres?

[Braeden320 0]

No unfortunatly..my workmate emailed me these. would be bloody interesting tho!

[pussytamer 0]

That's some interesting Stat's

Thanks :-)

[topcat 11]

and i thought i had it hard trying to keep the e28's tank full.

i'm thinking sponsership

[e30kingpin 0]

Iv got a mate that works on NZ's fastes dragster (Willy Whites) that thing is nuts!!

[Nobimmer 694]

Badass

Anyone seen High Octane:Detonate(?)

That's got up close review kinda thing on a top fueled drag car...something like 50 litres of fuel per run.Camera shakes like crazy just from the idle!

[crshbndct 0]

and of course now they are thinking about introducing PURE oxygen injection to create more horsepower... nuts.