Engines Only

On November 11, 2022, at the end of NH in California, Britney Forrest established the fastest speed in the history of higher fuel levels. In just three seconds and a half, she passed from 0 to 338 miles per hour. The higher fuel dragsters are the vehicles that accelerate faster on the planet. They are so fast that they go from 0 to 60 even before they go their own way, generating more than 8 grams of acceleration. That is a crazy speed. A speed that makes Formula 1 cars look And the engineering behind these 11,000 horsepower monsters is simply incredible. 330 miles per hour in less than 1,000 feet. These are three football fields. Only one of these engines, V8 of 500 cubic inches, its 8. 2L generates more power than the first five rows of the 500 miles of Daytona or half of the Formula 1 grill. They drink more than 11 gallons of nitromethane fuel per second, more than a Boeing 747 when taking off. And in the middle of each race, the bubbles heat up so much that the electrodes burn completely. And after this point, the engine continues to work efficiently The over-eaters are so powerful that they move so much air that they need 800 horsepower just to turn. This means that if you take a V8 M-series and put this over-eater on it, you wouldn't even be able to do it work. But all that power has a cost. The top engines only turn 540 revolutions of a 9500 revolutions per minute. Which means that, including the burned, the engine only needs to survive about 900 revolutions per hour. Which sounds incredible, but you must remember that only the low charge works for a maxim Once I made a video about why the V10 of the Formula 1 could only last 200 meters before having to rebuild or replace it completely. But these engines take more away from the limits of what it seems mechanically possible and, as a result, they must disassemble, inspect and rebuild after each gear. That if you are lucky and the engine does not explode halfway on the track. This is what makes Top Fuel so great. Not only are the fastest and most noisy vehicles on the planet. They are also some of the most dangerous and you never know what will happen when the lights are off. But how is it possible to generate so much power? And why do engines have such a short life? Well, those two questions go hand in hand. To understand why? First, we have to understand its basic operation and some of the incredible forces that enter the game. If we look at an Honda Accord, it has a motor that can work for hundreds of thousands of kilometers before it gets exhausted. The 10-speed engines can last even longer. And this is due to what they are designed from the beginning to be smooth, efficient and reliable in the long run. Even if we look at hypercars But as I have already said, when a Top Fuel Dragster takes off, it experiments forces of more than 8G, more than those that the astronauts face during the launch of a rocket. And this immense force is reflected internally, since each component is subjected to extreme tension. These cars do not have gearbox boxes. They only have a very large clutch that is directly connected to the engine. And this clutch does not close or completely lock until the car reaches almost 280 miles per hour. And only then can the engine send all its power to the wheels. And this engine is built from a basic design that is remounted to the 1950s. The pistons, the wheels and the wheels are subjected to explosive combustion pressures and extreme temperatures that can exceed 7,000 degrees F. It is a brutal environment. Now, the secret of the incredible power of these engines obviously resides in its engineering. A combination of huge feeders, precise fuel injection and highly refined nitromethane fuel contribute to the explosive output power. But this fuel is where everything begins. And it is basically different from any other fuel from races. In fact, nitromethane fuel is not usually used as fuel for engines. Instead, it is usually used in the chemical industry as a powerful solvent for textile products, tints, pharmaceutical and explosive products. It is known as monocombustible, which means that, un This is different from gasoline, which must be mixed with air precisely to be able to burn in a reliable way. This means that, despite the fact that nitrofuel has less energy than gasoline, it requires much less oxygen to burn efficiently. Nitrofuel requires only 1. 7 kg of air to burn 1 kg of fuel. While gasoline requires more than 14 kg of air to burn 1 kg of fuel. This is due to what? As we have said, nitro has its own oxygen. This means that a engine that works with nitrofuel can easily generate almost 10 times more power than a motor equivalent to normal gasoline. Since it is capable of bombing almost 10 times more fuel than the combustion chamber, which would be able to bomb if it were to use gasoline. But since nitro is such a slow combustion chamber, part of it inevitably ends up getting out of the exhaust without burning. And this is what causes these crazy gallows and those big yellow flames when a dragster takes off. It is all that nitro combustion without burning that mixes with the atmosphere. Just With all this combustion that burns and all this power that is capable of generating, one would think that a combustion engine would be an incredibly expensive and complex machine, similar to those seen in Formula 1. When in reality, the higher combustion engines are relatively simple. Its size is limited to 500 cubic inches or 8. 2 liters, which have a two-valve cylinder head, actioned by a simple push rod. Very different from small engines, complex and high revolutions that are used in series like Formula 1, with complex computer controls and pne This simple design seems almost archaic for current standards. But this design is established by the norms of the NHR and significantly helps to maintain the low costs. Which is important when the engines are spent as fast as these teams do. They are made of a single piece of solid al In part because they work for very short time. But also because the fuel itself acts as a refrigerator for valves and pistons. The sling is made of mastic steel and the cranes are made of forged al Could you ask yourself why not titani Well, it is because al Which removes a lot of that pressure from the cranks, as well as from the block itself. The pressure inside the combustion chamber is so high. More than 1,300 psi. Which actually cuts the length of the cranks in the course of a couple of races. This decreases the engine compression ratio and, therefore, decreases the amount of power that they are capable of generating. Now, the useful life of a crankshaft in a higher combustion engine is usually 10 to 12 passes. But the cranks that connect them to the crankshaft must change after each pass. And it generates so much heat during one of these passes that the exhaust valves of the engines themselves must be made of a special alloy called Ingnore. Which is the same material that is used in the pressure chambers of the Saturn 5 rockets. Now, remember when I said at the beginning that a dragster uses more fuel in a launch than a Boeing 747 during takeoff? It is true. But how does a engine get so much fuel? And how does everything burn? Well, the fuel is p 16 in the cranks, 8 in the intake manifold and 10 in the head of the intake manifold. And they use a 2. 1-2-2-PULG-ADAS fuel line. It is a fuel tube. It is larger than the refrigerant mangers in my car. They p That equals 5 gallons or 20 liters of fuel per second. These are speeds that would flood any other engine. And they cause an explosion that looks more And to burn so much fuel, it needs a lot of power. To be able to turn on so much fuel, they send a 60,000 volt spark and 1. 2 amperes to each of the two holes in the combustion chamber. It is supplied by two MSD magnets, so much power that you could use those magnets as arc welders. Now, the power supply that is used to force all that air and fuel to the combustion chamber was originally designed to be used in large diesel-powered engines. It p And all this air and fuel creates so much energy that only the exhaust itself, which points out to the outside and up from each cylinder, adds almost 1000 pounds of aerodynamic load in the launch, which is part of the reason why they can get so much traction from the beginning, because that exhaust helps to force those large and soft tires to the ground. But tires are another video in itself. So, why do these engines only last a few seconds? The intense heat, the pressure and the force exerted on each component of the engine makes the exhaust and damages occur at a very accelerated pace. The pistons crack and melt, the wheels bend and compress, the cranks are prone to disintegrate, the electrodes of the cranks burn completely, the cranks break, the engines of the coupler explode. The engine is added so much fuel that the engines can get to block itself if the fuel does not turn on correctly. The cranks can twist and deform. In essence, the engine tries to destroy itself from the moment it turns on. You also have some more cons The maintenance of a Dragster Top Fuel is a race against the clock, and it is not rare that the teams only have a few minutes to rebuild a full-fledged engine. If a car reaches the final in each race, the engine will completely disassemble, it will be inspected and will rebuild 184 times throughout a season. Now, this hard work requires a highly qualified mechanical team that works in perfect harmony. Not to mention that the financial cost of maintaining a Dragster Top Fuel, although cheap in comparison with other competition standards, is still astronomical. Each tank can cost tens of thousands of dollars and the engine reconstructions are an important part of the budget of a team. The new materials and engineering techniques promise to make the engines more durable, perhaps extending their useful life beyond the current limits. Having said that, the general useful life is not the most important thing here. And if you had to guess, most of the innovation is probably focused on safety more than reliability. But as the reliability increases, it will also make it possible for the teams to try to create enough reliable materials to finish the race. But one thing is certain, the search for speed will continue to lead to the machines and the people who build them to the limit of what is possible. It may be that these engines only last three seconds, but the legacy they leave in the automotive industry will last all life.