1/4 mile question terminal speed
Discussion
I regularly run a motorcycle at rwyb events and due to the torque of my engine I get very quick 1/8 mile times and have run a best of 10.55@129.8mph where as some Japanese bikes will run the same ET at speeds well north of 130mph, there's quite a bit involved in going consistently fast in a straight line
In a sense , drag racing is the purest motorsport of all. Live, I 've watched everything from F1 ,WEC , WRC and lots else for decades and drag racing is something I still adore , having first seen it in the days of Bootsy Herridge and Dennis Priddle . I have dabbled with RWYB and it's fun but the real appeal is watching the big power cars like Pro Mods and upwards .
The spectacle is extraordinary - visually and aurally - and the speed is simply astonishing . I have never taken anybody to top line drag racing who hasn't been blown away by it . It is uncorrupted by the massive sponsorship , corporate bulls
t and absurd self importance of many other areas of motorsport, very friendly and accessible as well having an appealing sort of rebel chic .
If somebody gave me the opportunity to drive a nice old DFV powered F1 car I'd take their arm off. I'd be slow and hopeless but I'd have a go in a heartbeat. But I wouldn't sit in a Top Fueller for all the tea in China
The spectacle is extraordinary - visually and aurally - and the speed is simply astonishing . I have never taken anybody to top line drag racing who hasn't been blown away by it . It is uncorrupted by the massive sponsorship , corporate bulls
t and absurd self importance of many other areas of motorsport, very friendly and accessible as well having an appealing sort of rebel chic . If somebody gave me the opportunity to drive a nice old DFV powered F1 car I'd take their arm off. I'd be slow and hopeless but I'd have a go in a heartbeat. But I wouldn't sit in a Top Fueller for all the tea in China
some bloke said:
Here's some interesting info about Top Fuellers - it's a bit out of date as they no longer run 1/4 mile but this bit is interesting:
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.
-One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Daytona 500. They have over half again as much horsepower in one cylinder as a Dodge Viper has in all ten. No one has ever successfully run one long enough on a dyno to get a horsepower reading. Current estimates are right around 6,000 horsepower.
-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. The fuel pump alone requires more horsepower to turn than the average street car produces.
-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.
-The 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitro methane produces a 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, disassociated from atmospheric water vapour 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 the run, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by running the car out of fuel. There is no way to cut off the fuel; the engine stops only when it blows or the tank runs dry.
-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 an average of over 4G's. In order to reach 200 mph well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8G's. To put this in perspective; a top fuel dragster, parked next to a Super Hornet on the steam catapult on the deck of an aircraft carrier, would be in the water and sinking before the Super Hornet was halfway down the deck.
-Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence.
-Top Fuel Engines only turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light!
-Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load. They only survive about 80% of the time.
-Redline at 9500 rpm.
-Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimated $1,000.00 per second.
-The engine is entirely rebuilt every run, or every 900 revolutions. New pistons and rings, new rods, new rod bearings. Sometimes a new crank. The crew does this in about two hours between rounds.
-The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter mile. The top speed record is 333.00 mph (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66' of the run.
-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.
From https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/597847/i...
And there was Sammy Miller in Vanishing Point.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.
-One Top Fuel dragster 500 cubic inch Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows at the Daytona 500. They have over half again as much horsepower in one cylinder as a Dodge Viper has in all ten. No one has ever successfully run one long enough on a dyno to get a horsepower reading. Current estimates are right around 6,000 horsepower.
-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. The fuel pump alone requires more horsepower to turn than the average street car produces.
-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.
-The 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitro methane produces a 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, disassociated from atmospheric water vapour 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 the run, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F. The engine can only be shut down by running the car out of fuel. There is no way to cut off the fuel; the engine stops only when it blows or the tank runs dry.
-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 an average of over 4G's. In order to reach 200 mph well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8G's. To put this in perspective; a top fuel dragster, parked next to a Super Hornet on the steam catapult on the deck of an aircraft carrier, would be in the water and sinking before the Super Hornet was halfway down the deck.
-Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have completed reading this sentence.
-Top Fuel Engines only turn approximately 540 revolutions from light to light!
-Including the burnout, the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load. They only survive about 80% of the time.
-Redline at 9500 rpm.
-Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimated $1,000.00 per second.
-The engine is entirely rebuilt every run, or every 900 revolutions. New pistons and rings, new rods, new rod bearings. Sometimes a new crank. The crew does this in about two hours between rounds.
-The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter mile. The top speed record is 333.00 mph (533 km/h) as measured over the last 66' of the run.
-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.
From https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/597847/i...
The car cost to build was a maximum £20k. Cost per run, 20 gals of 89%HTP cost £40. 1984 prices.
No need to rebuild any engine just refuel with 20 gals of 89% HTP and go again.
Speed 386mph time 3.58 second over the 1/4. At Santa Pod 1984.
At that time Top fuel cars were running low 5's over the quarter. Nearly 40 years ago and still no one is anywhere near his times and speeds.
His 1/8, yes 1/8 mile speed was 319mph! in 1.606 seconds !.His 0-60 was 0.28 sec and 0-100 was 0.36 seconds.
Once you saw Sammy Miller in Vanishing Point nothing else counted.
The idea is to get down the strip as quick as possible. No one was or is anywhere near Sammy Miller. RIP.
Sammy stood in front of Vanishing Point with GF 1979/80
Chunkychucky said:
In all seriousness i've never understood drag racing, boring to watch, boring to have a go at, the sort of 'motorsport' where electric cars would probably be quite good. Never realised so many people enjoyed going quickly in a straight line - like they're oblivious to the existence of corners 
That all seems an odd viewpoint from anyone on a 'car' forum.Have you ever had a go?
I mean, who doesn't like putting your foot and feeling acceleration?
I'd guess you haven't had a go either, as it is a lot harder than it sounds. It's not like 0-60mph testing, in a drag race you get one shot to get it perfect. Let it bog and you'll be slow. Spin the wheels and you could be really slow. You also have to manage the tree lights, staging and timing. Winning isn't always running the fastest time....
I also completely fail to understand how how you think it can be boring, when it is normally very loud, explosive and with varied results.
Agreed - I'm sure if our sceptical friend went to the Pod he might find his views alter a tad. In the off season I find a daily diet of 10 minutes of US drag racing from YouTube guys like 1320 video is a good start to the evening . As for the sneery little comment about corners , I dare say a Pro Mod driver might reply 'You never heard of power , boy ? '.
I have no time for people that diss drag racing.
Sit behind any decent power car and watch it do a run and you will see they run anything but straight, and anything with that much power pulls and yaws all over the place.
I think the highest speeds I would have seen was fuel something, maybe 320mph or something, regularly get stuff over 220 ish and that is damn quick.
In the US you have an outlaw event where you even have fwd stuff b=nudging 200, and street stuff doing well over, stuff getting int he 5's it is insane.
Sit behind any decent power car and watch it do a run and you will see they run anything but straight, and anything with that much power pulls and yaws all over the place.
I think the highest speeds I would have seen was fuel something, maybe 320mph or something, regularly get stuff over 220 ish and that is damn quick.
In the US you have an outlaw event where you even have fwd stuff b=nudging 200, and street stuff doing well over, stuff getting int he 5's it is insane.
300bhp/ton said:
Chunkychucky said:
In all seriousness i've never understood drag racing, boring to watch, boring to have a go at, the sort of 'motorsport' where electric cars would probably be quite good. Never realised so many people enjoyed going quickly in a straight line - like they're oblivious to the existence of corners
That all seems an odd viewpoint from anyone on a 'car' forum.Have you ever had a go?
I mean, who doesn't like putting your foot and feeling acceleration?
I'd guess you haven't had a go either, as it is a lot harder than it sounds. It's not like 0-60mph testing, in a drag race you get one shot to get it perfect. Let it bog and you'll be slow. Spin the wheels and you could be really slow. You also have to manage the tree lights, staging and timing. Winning isn't always running the fastest time....
I also completely fail to understand how how you think it can be boring, when it is normally very loud, explosive and with varied results.
You can reduce any motorsport to "it's boring to watch" by reducing it to one attribute. Why F1, you get the same effect by watching cars drive by a motorway services. Why go-karts, I have scalextric at home. Why MotoGP, I can watch Mighty Morphing Power Rangers whenever I want.
I pimped my Rocket Bike T-Shirt with the run data from Eric´s Final run.
The 1/8 mile numbers are even more crazy than the full run times,
but that 4 will stand forever as the quickest 2-wheeled ET evAr.
Interesting to see that from 100ft to 1320ft the speed was almost identical,
as if the rocket was running on fumes by then.
Now if any eventual new owner could provide full boost up to 1320,
the 300mph maybe could be smashed...
The 1/8 mile numbers are even more crazy than the full run times,
but that 4 will stand forever as the quickest 2-wheeled ET evAr.
Interesting to see that from 100ft to 1320ft the speed was almost identical,
as if the rocket was running on fumes by then.
Now if any eventual new owner could provide full boost up to 1320,
the 300mph maybe could be smashed...
Benni said:
I pimped my Rocket Bike T-Shirt with the run data from Eric´s Final run.
The 1/8 mile numbers are even more crazy than the full run times,
but that 4 will stand forever as the quickest 2-wheeled ET evAr.
Interesting to see that from 100ft to 1320ft the speed was almost identical,
as if the rocket was running on fumes by then.
Now if any eventual new owner could provide full boost up to 1320,
the 300mph maybe could be smashed...
Must require some serious balls to achieve those times on two wheels!The 1/8 mile numbers are even more crazy than the full run times,
but that 4 will stand forever as the quickest 2-wheeled ET evAr.
Interesting to see that from 100ft to 1320ft the speed was almost identical,
as if the rocket was running on fumes by then.
Now if any eventual new owner could provide full boost up to 1320,
the 300mph maybe could be smashed...
Only ever been on the drag strip twice, decided to run my old Supra at Santa Pod and on the first run, I set off quite sedately and achieved a 12.1, so my friend that was also running a Supra lent me his Mickey Thompson drag radials for the 2nd run. As accompanying them with a hard launch, the car should be in the 10’s.
So I did a nice burnout to get them good and hot, lined up to the start line, lights started counting down as I used the 2 step launch control and dropped the clutch as that green light showed…………..I then subsequently destroyed the diff!
Benni said:
I pimped my Rocket Bike T-Shirt with the run data from Eric´s Final run.
The 1/8 mile numbers are even more crazy than the full run times,
but that 4 will stand forever as the quickest 2-wheeled ET evAr.
Interesting to see that from 100ft to 1320ft the speed was almost identical,
as if the rocket was running on fumes by then.
Now if any eventual new owner could provide full boost up to 1320,
the 300mph maybe could be smashed...
Eric is a legend but I'm always wary of thinking records will stand forever , Larry Mcbride ran a 5.61@268 last year, I thought no one could match Elmer Tretts 6.06 run in 1996 nut now 5 second runs are commonplace. If NHRA run a series or even a few more exhibition races it could develop the class no end , needs some new blood as well as Spiderman is in his mid 60's now The 1/8 mile numbers are even more crazy than the full run times,
but that 4 will stand forever as the quickest 2-wheeled ET evAr.
Interesting to see that from 100ft to 1320ft the speed was almost identical,
as if the rocket was running on fumes by then.
Now if any eventual new owner could provide full boost up to 1320,
the 300mph maybe could be smashed...
Fuel bikes scare the hell out of me though think id prefer the rocket !
Having seen Eric Teboul a few times, when he goes it does look like he's essentially put a couple of wheels under a short range missile, climbed aboard and hit the fire button. "Like st off a shovel" simply doesn't do it justice.
When you go to a day's racing with lots of different classes, you end up getting a bit of "speed fatigue" where something doesn't LOOK fast as it heads down the strip but when you see the ET and speed you realise it would be pasting a hypercar. But Eric T's rocket bike always looked fast!
He had a pretty cool converted coach that he used as his bike transport and accommodation, IIRC from wandering about the pits (another bonus of drag racing is it's the only top flight motorsport where you can wander around the pits without a special pass, watch the teams working, maybe even speak to the drivers.)
t off a shovel" simply doesn't do it justice.When you go to a day's racing with lots of different classes, you end up getting a bit of "speed fatigue" where something doesn't LOOK fast as it heads down the strip but when you see the ET and speed you realise it would be pasting a hypercar. But Eric T's rocket bike always looked fast!
He had a pretty cool converted coach that he used as his bike transport and accommodation, IIRC from wandering about the pits (another bonus of drag racing is it's the only top flight motorsport where you can wander around the pits without a special pass, watch the teams working, maybe even speak to the drivers.)
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