A Friend of mine from church aquired two free tickets to the NHRA drag races for today from the Ford dealership. They were giving them away for test driving a car. Full priced tickets run almost $50 a piece. We were in the VIP section just off the staging/start line area. All these pictures were taken from my seat. The races were great. I can't believe how loud the nitro engins are. Running open pipes, the blasting from the exhaust rumbles the whole stadium. It litteratly makes your hair stand on end and shears the flesh from your ear drums. It is an awesome feeling.
I got an e-mail a little while ago entittled "Putting Acceleration Into Perspective". It is about top fuel nitro drag cars... the very type of drags I went to see today. Hope you like the description to follow...
ACCELERATION
PUT INTO PERSPECTIVE
* One Top Fuel dragster outfitted with a 500 cubic-inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower(8,000 HP) than the first 4 rows at NASCAR's Daytona 500...
* Under full throttle, a dragster engine will consume 11.2
gallons of
nitro methane per second; a fully loaded Boeing
747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate but with 25% less
energy being
produced.
* A stock Dodge Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power
to merely
drive the dragster's supercharger. (Note: the new
Chrysler Hemi is not a
true hemi. It is only a "Hemi" because Chrysler
has the trademark on the
name and chooses to call this engine a "Hemi")
* 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 lockup 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 sparkplug, which is
typically the
output of an electric arc welder in each cylinder.
* Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a
pass.
*After 1/2 way thru the run, the engine is
'dieseling' from compression
and the glow of the 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
enough force sufficient
to blow the cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split
the block in
half!!
* Top fuel dragsters reach over 300 MPH +... before you
have completed
reading this sentence.
* In order to exceed 300 MPH in 4.5 seconds, a dragster
must accelerate
an average of over 4 G's. In order to reach 200 MPH
well before reaching
half-track, at launch the acceleration approaches 8
G's.
* Top Fuel engines turn approximately 675 revolutions from
light to
light!
* Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 9000
revolutions
under load.
* The red line is actually quite high at 9500 RPM.
* THE BOTTOM LINE: Assuming all the equipment is paid for,
the pit crew
is working for free, & NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run will
cost an estimated
$1000 per second.
0 to 100 MPH in .8 seconds (the first 60 feet of the run)
0 to 200 MPH in 2.2 seconds (the first
350 feet of the run)
6 g-forces at the starting line (nothing accelerates faster
on land)
6 negative g-forces upon deployment of twin 'chutes at
300 MPH
An NHRA Top Fuel Dragster accelerates quicker than any
other land
vehicle on earth. . Quicker than a jet fighter plane....
quicker than
the space shuttle.... or snapping your fingers!!
The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.420
seconds for
the quarter-mile (2004, Doug Kalitta). The top speed record
is 337.58
MPH as measured over the last 66' of the run (2005,
Tony Schumacher).
So, in summary... Let's now put this all into
perspective: Imagine
this....
You are driving a new $140,000 Lingenfelter twin-turbo
powered Corvette
Z-06. Over a mile up the road, a Top Fuel dragster is
staged & ready to
'launch' down a quarter-mile strip as you pass. You
have the advantage
of a flying start. You run the 'Vette hard, on up
through
the gears and
blast across the starting line, and pass the dragster at an
honest 200
MPH.... The 'tree' goes green for both of you at
that exact moment. The
dragster departs & starts after you. You keep your foot
buried hard to
the floor, and suddenly you hear an incredibly brutally
screaming whine
that sears and pummels your eardrums & within a mere 3
seconds the
dragster effortlessly catches & passes you. He beats
you to the finish
line, a quarter-mile away from where you just passed him.
Think about it
- from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200
MPH.... and it
not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the planet when
he passed
you within a mere 1320 foot long race !!!!
That my friend..... is acceleration!
