Just for fun, take a WAG at how many revolutions it takes the typical race car to get down the 1320...

 

From my calculations a Top Fuel dragster will turn about 525 revolutions from start line to finish line.

Factor in burnout and staging and it should still be under 1000 revolutions.

Just a guess though.

 

I worked this out for someone on another forum. He wanted to know how big of a scoop opening he needed. Based on the engine size I calculated how much air the engine would need to pull in during a 10 second pass.

Since rpm isn't constant you can only make a guess at the maximum rpm the engine can obtain.

I shift at 7000 rpm. In a 10.5 second pass at full rpm my engine rotates 1225 revolutions from when I let go of the transbrake to when I cross the finish line. Since I'm not at full rpm during the entire 10.5 seconds I'd guess the engine actuallly rotates less than 1000 times.

Now you can see that in 1 second it rotates 100 times so when you drop a valve it doesn't take long for major damage to happen. 100 times engine rotation means each spark plug fires 50 times in that second.

50 spark plug fires per second in 10.5 seconds means each plug fires 525 times during the pass.

Any more wierd numbers you want to know? How about that my rear tires have a circumference of 91". 1320 feet of the 1/4 mile is 15840" Assuming there's no wheel spin at the start line the tire rotates 174 times during a pass.

 

Who voted for 5,000-8,000?

Even if the car screamed at 10,000 rpm for the whole pass, that's at least 30 seconds.

 

me and texas insterments came up with a little over 1200 for what i'd estimated to be an average thirdgen f body.

 

Whose meatball idea was this anyway????

 

I calculated mine to be about 700 times in a run...

 

Mine - but prompted by NHRA "facts" release.

They stated a top fueler engine turns ~900 revolutions for a pass, including burn-out. I had previously thought about 6000 RPMs being 100 revolutions per second, so I thought that 900/pass sounded pretty low. Mr. TI helped me see the light.

Just thought I'd put a different "spin" on the topic, to get people to think about what really happens.

 

i've read the nhra stuff before, like a TF tire only rotates 12 times or something really low

 

Whats a TF tire??

 

TF = Top Fuel....



athough TF could also be my initals.