I was handed this by a mate who is a drag car fan, I give him endless shit about how cars are so slow ect, my only response was "Well, I'm still faster than YOU"
First some useful? info:
One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Indy 500.
Under full throttle,A Top Fuel dragster consumes 1 gallon of nitromethane per second, a fully loaded 747 consumes jet A1 (fuel) at the same rate with 25% less energy produced.
A stock Dodge 426 Hemi V8 cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster's supercharger.
With 3000 CFM (cubic feet per min) being ramed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is comperssed into a near solid form befor ignition, cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.
At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitromethane the flame front temperature measures 7050 degrees F. (cook a chicken REAL fast! mv)
Nitromethane burns yellow, the white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gasses.
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 1/2 way, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exaust valves at 1400 deg F, the engine can only be shut down by cutting the fuel off.
If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned fuel builds up in the affected cylinders and then explodes with sufficent force to blow cylinder heads off in pieces or split the block in half.
In order to exceed 300 mph in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate at an average of over 4G's.
In order to reach 200 mph well befor half-track acceleration approaches 8G's.
Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour befor you have completed reading this sentence.
Top Fuel engines turn aproximately 540 revolutions from light to light.
Including the burnout the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load.
The redline is quite high (for a V8, not your whateverRRRRR mv) at 9500 rpm.
Time for a quarter mile run 4.441 seconds (on 10/05/03 Tony Schumacher)
Top speed is 333.00 mph (533 kph) (on 09/28/03 Doug Kalitta)
The bottom line, assuming evrything is paid off, the crew worked for free (crews get PAID now? mv) and nothing blows up, each run costs aprox $1000.00 per second. (Thats U.S. $ too. mv)
What this means to us:
You are riding the avarage (your choice here) MotoGP bike. Over a mile up the road , a Top Fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down a 1/4 mile strip as you pass.
You have the advantage of a flying start.
You run your bike hard up through the gears and blast over the starting line at honest 200 mph (923 ft/sec) or (320 kph) (YAAFUCKINGHOOO! mv)
The "tree" goes green for both you and the dragster at that moment.
The dragster launches and starts after you.
You keep your wrist cranked hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that sears your eardrums and within 3 seconds the dragster catches and passes you.
He beat you to the finish line, a quarter of a mile away from where you just passed him.
Think about this, from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you at 200 mph and not only caught you, but nearly blasted you off the track when he passed you within a mere 1320 foot long course!
Sucks eh? We need faster bikes!
We do have advantages though, we can go around corners and thay aren't using them as pursuit cars yet.
It took me ages to type this so you had better have appreciated it!
I'm a bloody mechanic, not a typist!
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Originally Posted by GROOMER
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