Team Dangerous

Here's a little interesting stuff about Nitro:

* One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic inch (that's 8.2 litres in new money) Hemi
engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Daytona 500.

* Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 11/2 gallons of
nitromethane 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 for nitromethane the
flame front temperature measures 7050 degrees F.

* Nitromethane 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 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
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 sufficient force
to blow 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 mph 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 redline is actually quite high at 9500rpm.

* 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 (10/05/03,
Tony Schumacher). The top speed record is 333.00 mph (533 km/h) as
measured over the last 66' of the run (09/28/03 Doug Kalitta).

Putting all of this into perspective:

You are driving the average $140,000 Lingenfelter "twin-turbo"
powered Corvette Z06. 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 'Vette hard up
through the gears and blast across 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. You keep
your foot down hard, but you hear an incredibly brutal whine that
sears your eardrums 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.

That, folks, is acceleration.

Frightening, isn't it!

Rob.

DarricksZ28

That isn't the topic of this thread!
PLUS I've already answered this question, the answer is NO! Obviously you haven't been to a Fuel race, and haven't seen the extensive maintenance that goes along with a Top Fuel or Nitro Funny Car.

DarricksZ28

Adding nitro only would lean out the mixture. So I think it would be the other way around. No doubt there are gains to be had when mixing it with the fuel which is why it's outlawed in class racing.

icantdrift

iTrader: (1)

would it stay together? not likely.

what would the top end speed be? it can be calculated roughly if you know the engine revs/rolling diameter of the tire/gearing in the rear. but you'd also need to take into account the slippage of the clutchpack. most are geared their lowest to hit their max speed within the confines of the 1/4 mile and apply maximum power to the tires.

will it lift? too many variables to answer. depends on car setup/track surface/environmental conditions. it's very possible at 300+ miles per hour though.

Wnts2Go10O

iTrader: (12)

im not asking anything about tf cars. this has to do with the possibility as nitromethane as a sprayed poweradder.

that being said, what fittings, nozzles, etc would be able to hold up to the corrosive properties of it?

Sean Collins

Nitro doesn;t produce say a larger cobustion event in terms of raw pressure but expands much much more then gasoline therby building TQ when the cranksahft is actually more optimally timmed to produce TQ.

Rusted40

http://www.pricechemical.com/nitromethane.htm

http://www.pro-blend.com/circle3.htm

been out for years. I have used the pro-blend. its an eye burner

spiking a meth sprayer with nitro should work too
**** is mega corrosive tho.....

DarricksZ28

I would think brass fittings would get the job done. Nylon hose, or steel braided line I guess would be better to use. I think that whatever you would use, you'd have to flush the lines after you're done beating on it. How much are you thinking about spraying? In lesser quantities the better off you'd be.

Armageddon

iTrader: (41)

Ah, That makes sense. Who knows what this guy was doing. I just know he needed his "fix".

Wnts2Go10O

iTrader: (12)

i would probably start with a dry nitrous nozzle so i could use predetermined sized jets. most likely as small as possible to start with and use a good wideband setup to see what it does. amount for now is unknown but not enough to need more than a 1-2 gallon cell. hmmm

Big-DEN

How about better yet. Since the thread is attempt to being kept on the original track?

Has this been done before?

How has it been done?

What were results?

The Alchemist

iTrader: (19)

So my question is this. You buy that gallon of rc car nitro methane which containes ~30% nitro and the rest methanol and you mix approximately a quart of it with a tank of gas, would you benefit at all?

Would it add any power, would it run super lean? Would the combustion process be enough to ignite the nitro?

gun5l1ng3r

And could we pour it into a stock fuel system?


(Probably not but I had to ask)

DarricksZ28

This link I posted earlier has some info on running nitro. If you do a search on Speedtalk you'll get a couple of topics also.

DarricksZ28

Yes you could, but you'd have to adjust your a/f ratio accordingly for the amount you're adding.

DarricksZ28

You COULD, but remember nitro and methanol are both very corrosive. The stock rubber lines would definitely deteriorate if the mixture was left in the system. The lesser the mix ratio the less damage. That is why it would be better to build/design an auxillary delivery system. That way the nitro mix would only be used at WOT (or close to it). That would keep costs down and preserve your existing fuel system.

DarricksZ28

That's a good idea. How do you plan to add the extra fuel while it's spraying? Or would you mix it with the nitro? I hadn't thought about that. You could start at a 50/50 mix of nitro/methanol with something like a .012 jet and see what happens. Work up your jet size from there based on your data collected.

Big-DEN

Be safe to say if you going to run nitro you run an auxilary system. Include seperate tank, lines, pump and injection.

It is being said here, that top fuel running nitro only for WOT, and that is the assumption here.

The thoughts must be that we dont want to have arc welders for ignition coils and don't want our plugs to melt and the ignition process to rely on a "glow plug" like affect at any point.

So nitro that can be run on a high performance or track only vehicle, with some level of practicality to it.

If one needs to change to a much higher heat resistant plug that would be interesting. But if piston and ring design change much this would need to come into this discussion.

Louie83

iTrader: (3)

For people talking in terms of cars trapping high 1/4 mph's being able to reach super high speeds, drag due to air increases exponentially as the mph increases. Anyways, I doubt top fuel dragsters are designed to go much faster than their trap speed before they generate lift.

DarricksZ28

Using it will definitely warrant the "traditional changes" when using a power adder. Like changing plug heat ranges, adjusting timing, air/fuel settings will still apply obviously. The mystery lies in how much of a change is needed for a given amount of nitromethane. So far I haven't found any basic rules of thumb when running it. I would assume that on a properly tuned engine, amounts that provide a 50-100hp increase wouldn't require much change to the setup. Only small fine tuning would be required. Either way, you'd have to know what you're doing when it comes to tuning. No tuning experience+Nitromethane=BOOM! Same as nitrous!