[HBK_2007]

the manager of my local Car Quest gave this to my dad the other day. little out of date but still cool...

What is acceleration?
One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the NASCAR Daytona 500. Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1 1/2 gallons of nitro methane 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 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture of 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 the atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases. Dual magnetos supple 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder. Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during one pass. After half-way, the engine is dieseling form compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. At that point 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 the 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 at an average of over 4G’s. in order to reach 200 well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8G’s. Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence. Top Fuel Engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light! Including the burnout the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load. The red-line is actually quite high at 9500 rpm. 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 US $1,000.00 per second. The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter mile (10/05/2003 Tony Shumacher). The top speed record is 333.00 mph (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66’ of the run (09/28/2003 Doug Kalitta). Putting all this into perspective: You are driving the average $140,000.00 Lingenfelter “twin-turbo” powered Corvette Z06. Over a mile up the road, a Top Fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down the quarter mile trip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run your ‘Vette hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and past the starting line and past the dragster at an honest 200 mph. The ‘tree’ goes green for both of you at that moment. The dragster launches and starts after you. He beats you to the finish line, a quarter mile away from where you passed him. Think about it, from a standing start, the dragster had spotted you 200 mph and not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1320 foot long race course.

That, folks, is acceleration.

[BWAL]

re

[White99stang]

nice repost, and the first 5 times it has been posted it was organized a bit better too, like each sentence on its own line not one big paragraph

[Onemanzu]

Originally Posted by BWAL09 re

POST!

[BWAL]

Originally Posted by Onemanzu POST!

you should have said tarded

in all seriousness though, i have enjoyed reading that write up all 18 times it has been posted

[lilmarc1988]

Originally Posted by White99stang nice repost, and the first 5 times it has been posted it was organized a bit better too, like each sentence on its own line not one big paragraph

lol

[XTCNAGT]

I think this may have been posted once before...

[JoshC!]

never read that before. thats pretty cool.

[HBK_2007]

i dont care if its a repost....still funny

[Trick Tuners]

yeah, i've seen that. I like this part

1.5 gallons /sec
4.44 sec / 1/4mi = 6.66 gal
That ends up being 26.6 gallons per mile or 0.038 mpg!

[UrbanRedneck]

I read that in a car-craft in 1997

[HMUSN]

acceleration is the rate of change of velocity with time.

ex:

A = lim Δv = dv = d2r
Δt→0 Δt = dt = dt2

[HBK_2007]

^smartass

[HMUSN]