One of the things I love about bikes is the acceleration. Admit it- accelerating hard on a fast bike is addicting. But I came across some info on Top Fuel dragsters at Automobile and it is pretty interesting stuff. I think the article is pretty old, but still relevant.
One Top Fuel dragster’s 500-cubic-inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first four rows at the Daytona 500.
A stock Dodge Hemi V-8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster’s 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 for nitromethane, the flame front temperature measures about 7000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Nitromethane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, separated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing heat of the exhaust gases.
Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder.
Spark plug electrodes can be totally consumed during a single pass. After half-distance, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees Fahrenheit. The engine is shut down by cutting the fuel flow.
If a spark plug fails early in the run, un-burned nitro can build up in the affected cylinder and explode with sufficient force to blow the cylinder head off in pieces or split the cylinder block in half.
In order to exceed 300 mph in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate at an average of more than 4 g’s. In order to reach 200 mph before half-distance, the launch acceleration approaches 8 g’s. A Top Fuel dragster reaches more than 300 mph before you have completed reading this sentence.
Assuming that all of the equipment is paid off, the crew works gratis, and nothing breaks, each run costs an estimated $1000 per second.
The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter-mile (October 5, 2003, Tony Schumacher). The top-speed record is 333.25 mph as measured over the last 66 feet of the quarter-mile (November 9, 2003, Doug Kalitta).
Putting all of this into perspective: You are riding a Honda MotoGP bike. Over a mile up the road, a Top Fuel dragster is staged and ready to launch down a quarter mile strip as you pass. You have the advantage of a flying start. You run the RC211V hard up through the gears and blast across the starting line and past the dragster at an honest 200 mph (293 ft/sec). The tree goes green for both of you at that moment. The dragster launches and starts after you. You keep full on the gas, but you hear a brutal whine and within 3 seconds the dragster catches and 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 not only caught, but nearly blasted you off the road when he passed you within a mere 1320 foot long race course. Of course the dragster is done after 1/4 mile and you ride off for a day fun in the twisty’s.
The Space Shuttle by comparison has a rather lazy 3g accel rate on take-off. But it has a really long drag strip to get up to the speed it needs to reach escape velocity:)
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