Thats why the fans go! I had a buddy of mine that worked for the nhra at the Phone lines in glendora and he would tell me how diehard the fans that called were, the would say one of the best thing about the nhra was the close up experiance it is. He worked there and did'nt even like racing, he would hook me up with tickets, parking, food couponds and exclusive passes. I went to pomona and i was hooked
When I was in the Army, I went to an NHRA race, went to Tony’s Pit and watched the entire time, it was cool, even got a tour of the rig from Tony, loved it.
seeing this reminded me of a story my brother neil told me. he was a "bracket" drag racer for many years, where for the most part, you own it, drive it, tune it, fix it, pay for it and sponsorship?? what is that, some kind of a furrin' word??? this took place many years ago. he was a car mechanic, and on his way to a big out of state race. now bear in mind this is long before cell phones, battery impact wrenches, etc. he brought along a couple of his buddies, who were also car mechanics. along the way, one of the trailer tires carrying the racecar went flat or had a blowout, and they limped quickly into a small pullover rest stop on I 295 or 95, during a howling, drenching rain storm. they could not sit there and wait an hour or two or more and wait for it to stop as they were up against the clock to get to the track and register in. sitting in the cab of neil's old pickup, they divvied up assignments, as they knew they would be drenched the minute they stepped out. using only hand tools and a lug wrench, they disconnected the trailer from the p/u , jacked it up, changed the tire, re-attached the trailer to the p/u, and were on their way in 6 minutes! this is, in itself cool, but what was really neat in my opinion, was the symphony of approving truck and car horns blaring as they "exited the pits" in approval of their totally unanticipated exhibition!!
@Wade Maybe, maybe not. For a while Force was using Justin Sturgil, so they haven't always gotten it all down to perfection. but yeah I can see wanting to waste the time hammering away with a 1/2" gun instead of replacing twisted off studs.
I can think of very few things under the hood of my truck I can take apart in 4 minutes short of taking the battery out. Mabey 2 spark plugs if I hurry.
So I have a question: I understand these guys do this 100s of times, but are these engines built a certain way so they come apart faster? Or is it taken apart in the normal way?
KuKoKaNuKo i believe its built like a normal engine, there is no “quick” way of takingg an engine apart as they have to have specific clearances in the engine, that means bolts in a specific spot torqued to a specific lb ft, and different bolts need different specs i e header bolts may have different torque specs and setup than the main housing bolts
Not really. On a normal car you’ve got so much emissions equipment and sensors it takes longer, but what really cuts down on the time here is already knowing exactly what size wrench you need, having a place for every bolt, having every wrench within a few feet of you, not doing things like a normal person does like mistaking the size of socket needed, walking back to the toolbox, looking for the one size bigger for 20 minutes, dropping something and taking 30 minutes to find it
These engines are much easier to dismantle partly due to having no cooling system, the block is filled with concrete. No hoses/ clips/ water pump or radiator.
They are allotted 75 minutes to rebuild the motor which usually consists of internals like pistons, rods, bearings, etc..during a rebuild every major component is removed and inspected or automatically replaced depending on the blocks performance. The only major pieces that stays with the block are the crank and camshaft. However they are being inspected by taking off the main caps. www.hotrod.com/how-to/engine/top-fuel-engine-rebuild/ --- If you're interested in learning more about it.
Thanks for the link - I'll read up on it. Crazy how much work they do. Between materials, replacement parts, labor, alcohol or whatever goofy fuel mix they're using, I can only imagine how much each pass costs them, lol. Price you pay for nearly 10k hp I guess!
i would advise speaking to one of the team members in the pits when they aren't busy for more accurate information if your honestly curious. but usually it's conrods an pistons. a piston can be bent an eighth of a hair an they need to replace it because there not gonna risk a $500,000 motor for a piston or anything of that sort , they tear the engine down an test everything with a beam machine to make sure everything is in check. although they do change things due to wear an tare. its not always broken or damaged. belts often snap as well an they need replacement , the tires do lose strength and flexibility. as such of other parts. i do know that the block is often used more than once . an the same goes for blowers. but they too are totally dismantled an put back together to check for problems or errors. i've spend lots of time in the pits, but there's always someone who knows better. i've always had more interest in this than any jet car or social media. this is a need for speed an power
The block is half the cost of the motor If you do 8 runs and only have to replace the block once, you saved quite a bit of money Also, there are pre runs to see what heats you’re gonna be in, if you replace the motor entirely, that’s basically cheating Who knows what different performance modifications you have on this new motor
why not pull the bullet and trans and drop a new pair in?? It'd take half the time and then a backup crew could rebuild the first bullet for the next change over???
Presumably they don't dare use more torque for fear of breaking the connecting rods or the titanium bolts that hold the exhaust header on. That fucker is literally white hot during the race and has extremely tight tolerances, so I bet everything binds up like a motherfucker. They can't do what I do (soak it in PB Blaster, tap firmly, and come back in an hour) so they hit it with 400 strikes a minute of the highest torque they know it can handle without deforming or breaking. Each team gets (I think) like 1 hour to rebuild anything they want and get their asses back on the line. Break one of those $100 bolts off inside the head and you'll be well-fucked and far from home. Might as well just go home in that case, and I believe that's precisely what they do.
How do you not realize how stupid you sound. Do you even know what connecting rods are? That rod that connects the piston to the crankshaft? None of which you see here. And they never even removed the exhaust headers, they kept them attached to the heads. You're just rambling a bunch of shit and putting it together in a sentence. But please tell me which "connecting rods" you're talking about.
nice to see where ur tax dollars are going, dont get me wrong,, its a awesome as shit but these guys go through an entire engine every run, and their probably the most expensive engines in existence...
they dont use up engines that fast and id think F1 engines surpass them by just a few bucks. theres nothing unique about the engines. its just a massively overbuilt ohv engine
correction: they teardown and rebuild the engine after every run. it's not always an entirely new engine, and in any case, the block is usually the component that lasts longest (and costs the most, after pistons and conrods).
shbitz It's based on the elephant 426 Hemi, has the same bore spacing, and pretty much nothing else in common. They make upwards of 10,000HP running on nitro and methanol. It's ridiculous. cloud-computing.tmcnet.com/news/2014/08/02/7952726.htm
I'm a motorsports fan but I can't bother with Top Fuel or funny. The whole rebuild effort is so wasteful, all those parts have to go back into scrap, it's ridiculous to consume those kinds of resources for, what... 6 seconds of driving? It's not worth it.
