What would top fuel be like if they didn't regulate the engines they can use?

Jet engines are actually better suited for for racing than rockets. Unless you wanna race on the rings of Saturn, that is.

I was referencing the old Turbonique drag axle products which used a rocket engine to drive the rear wheels. They were banned by the NHRA for being too good.

>Jet engines are actually better suited for for racing than rockets
Bullshit. Rockets are far better suited for drag racing, they have a better power to weight ratio and instant power.

Retards shouldnt post

They'd switch to dohc

>not having antilag on your jet engine for better takeoffs

It wouldn't be that much different. They're basically already at the limit of the combustion engine. If they went with bigger engines that would just be more weight and more wheelspin. If they did a 1 mile race things would be interesting.

>They're basically already at the limit of the combustion engine
impossible, they aren't even using direct injection

Dude. 11 000hp from 8~ liters.... Each cylinder is making as much as a Veyron... That's basically the limit of what metal can take. DOHC or DI isn't going to make more power at this point.

>DOHC or DI isn't going to make more power at this point.

You honestly believe this would hold up to 11k hp when it can't even keep it's self together in a production car?

cant even turn lmao

Everything else being equal. Liter for liter dohc makes more power

if these cars only drive in a straight line on standardized tracks why even have drivers in the first place

so we can laugh at rednecks killing themselves

>Liter for liter dohc makes more power

Irrelevant when the engine is physically massive and weighs twice as much as a pushrod engine.

You could say the same about any motorsport.

You're retarded. Your stupid DOHC shitbox head flows less on all cylinders than a top fuel dragster engine flows through one valve.

why does it matter? its not really relevant, drag racing is a dead end sport.

they would switch to turbines

Ehh at least eh NHRA isn't pushing small engine cuckery like most other motorsports.

Number one, Top Fuel can't run solely direct injection because the blower rotors are lubricated by the fuel- Not to mention nitro is kind of funny as a slow burning fuel and if I'm thinking about this right, likes being churned up and "aerosolized" to a certain extent. Nitro is also a fair bit denser than gasoline which increases its inertia. If I'm on the right track this could make it want to "pool" on the cylinder, might have a less complete burn- But nobody to my knowledge has run nitro direct injected, I'm not chemical engineer and so dickwaving about whether DI specifically would bump Top Fuel power is basically all of us talking out our ass.

...

Anybody on here know how they form the body like that?

I've always wondered about this, racing cars are usually unique and hand made and are not mass-produced so they can't do some expensive plastic molding process.

The car in the picture looks like it has plastic fairings. What do they do for cars like F1 cars?

because it isnt plastic
fiberglass bro

Whay if they added VTEC?

>can't do some expensive
Why not?

>muh VTECK
Does anybody on Veeky Forums actually understand how valve timing and all that crazy shit like the laws of physics works?

It also completely undermines a top fuel engine runs near constant RPM from green light to finish line, but I don't think you should take such facetious suggestions so seriously.

Inline turbo charged 4 bangers

youtu.be/yyTNwpi0dVs

>implying that's top fuel

>implying they would choose to go slower

>555-come on now

This runs 5's and it's street legal. You just can't beat the pushrod v8.

it's someone in the smack dab center of a midlife crisis wanting to drive the thing they just spent their life's savings on
it's not too subtle really

>I have no idea how top level racing teams are structured

>any motorsport.
are you a yankee? most motorsports aren't on straight lines

Nitromethane reacts violently to pressure

why they dont inflate tyres

maximum s t i c c

fastest 1/4 mile pass ever was done by a rocket powered car so I imagine theyd all be rockets

imagine what they could do today

they have like 7 psi

Uhhh yes usually a 2 liter engine flows less than a 52 liter one.

Goddamn you're a dense retard. Have you considered suicide?

That was a comparison between your 2L engine against a single 1L cylinder.
This. Although that poster would be too incompetent to manage suicide.

top fuel heads flow in like the 500 cfm range
a Honda head from the late 80s flows like half that

top fuels magic is the supercharger

aluminum is hand molded but any composites still use molds

they do make one off molds even just for the 5 or so cars they build
its extremely expensive but not prohibitively to a car manufacturer

even singer designed and built it's own carbon molds and they surely do not have the revenue of someone like porsche.

also to be honest it's not even really that expensive, it's just very time consuming building molds.

And running an oxygenated fuel.

They form an inverse mold with tons of bondo, clay, wood, foam, fucking cardboard. Hell anything that they can stick together. They then polish that smooth as a baby's vagina and lay fiberglass over it.

I said one valve you unbelievable idiot

>a Honda head from the late 80s flows like half that
No. I understand that you're a retarded honda fanboy and a tripfag so stupidity is part of your program, but no. Very no.

If they stuck with actual piston motors they'd definitely switch to DOHC because they simply make more power than the equivalent displacement OHV, and there wouldn't be any displacement limits.

IF they changed up the motor completely they'd probably use some sort of turboshaft or just use rocket engines.

not a production engine, sperg more

accufabracing.com/accufab-mustang

What part of constant RPM didn't you understand

You don't need dual camshafts on a top fuel car

Dual camshafts allow for more valves and more airflow, which is especially useful at high RPMs

The true hemispherical cross-flowing design of a top fuel head is about as optimal a design for plain airflow dynamics as you can get, allows for an optimal valve angle and is as far as practical purposes are concerned, is effectively incompatible geometrically with a DOHC 4 valve setup. It's really beneficial to nitromethane which as a fuel appreciates a way lower static compression ratio. The question of airflow is mitigated by a couple of things, the port being pressurized is one- More importantly is nitro being an oxygenated fuel. Airflow concerns only extend as far as supporting nitro's stoich AFR (something like 2:1). MOAR air takes a backseat to efficiently getting more dense nitro/air charge in and out of the engine. Air in and of itself doesn't like to change course and the added inertia of a more dense fuel and more of it in a comparative volume charge means the shit getting blown through a top fuel head likes to change course even less and on a basic level a 4 valve setup presents more variables likely to try and alter charge course on its journey.

>Dual camshafts allow for more valves and more airflow
Not necessarily. High end 2V and 4V heads have similar flow numbers, there are too many factors to make a blanket statement like that. Port geometry due to head design is a bigger factor than number of valves, and the dynamics of flow for a Top Fuel engine are more complex than just air.

Twinturbo, 100 PSI, 1000ci mountain motors making 25000hp. And then the drivelines break, and we start building anew.

Jets and rockets already exist in spectator/exhibition form.

Electrics are still rpetty unrestricted. And slow (by comparison).

Tire traction is still excessive, and deregulated implies new and improved compounds with bigger tires.

>sometimes ignition goes haywire and all cylinders somehow fire at once
A Top Fuel dragster has two magnetos. These two magnetos have an output so high that, when they would put out a continuous stream instead of peaks (spark events), you could arc weld with them.
When one plug fails in a dual-plug Hemi, the other is supposed to still ignite the mixture of nearly explosive nitromethanol. If both plugs fail to ignite the mixture, the 60 PSI of boost pressure cannot get the fuel out fast enough during the overlap between intake and exhaust. This means that a lot of fuel is still left in the cylinder. Since nitromethanol has a stoic ratio of 1.7:1 (regular gasoline is 14.7:1), you need a lot of fuel in the cylinder to begin with. So much so, that when the ignition fails, there is more fuel than air inside the cylinder. Fuel, unlike air, is a liquid, and therefore cannot be compressed. This means that the rotating assembly, most of the time the conrod, will fail, flying out the block, releasing the highly flammable nitromethanol/air mixture into the surrounding air and usually making for a nice fireball.

>They're crazy fucking loud in person though.
Top Fuel cars don't make noise. They make local earthquakes.

They already infalte their tires. The 11000hp being sent though them just rips them apart.

Direct injection actually vaporises worse, and is therefore worse for pure performance. hell, there isn't a single direct injector that can flow the retarded amount of gallons per second that a Top Fuel engine needs. DI is just for controlling emissions and fuel consumption, not for making power.

They already have more valve lift than a Honda does when it hits VTEC, yo.

Ford tried competing with the SOHC 427 or Cammer in what would now be Top Fuel. The timing system was too fragile, and it didn't make more power than the Hemis, so it died a slow death, untill Ford had expended all of the Cammers they planned to use in NASCAR.

The limit isn't the valvetrain here: it's the rotating assembly, and the amount of boost you can push through the valvetrain.

>Implying you wouldn't want to drive a rolling earthquake filled with liquid explosions
MUH REACSHUN TAAMES

Mountain motor masterrace reporting in, NHRA literally sanctions Top Fuel to enginelets of 500ci.

There is no regular low-pressure injector I know of that will flow enough fuel for TF purposes, nevermind a high-ressure direct injector.
You could lube the blowers with another set of injectors, as a dual injection setup. You could also just ditch the 14-71 entirely, and just use turbos.

The problem with flow is that it is not linear. 250cfm is not impressive, 400 is, and 500 is just space magic, especially in a constrained package like Top Fuel.

Valvetrain isn't the limit, bottom end is.

Now, you could try and make a 4 valve Hemi. MV Agusta does this, kind of, and they made the most powerful stock superbike engines for a long time. Similar Apfelbeck style heads can also make great amounts of power, but again, the air path isn't as linear, which is particularly important for nitro. It's stoic ratio is 1.7:1, which means there's a load of mass and inertia going through your carefully designed intake runner, and it does not want to stop or turn since it has so much mass.

Still doesn't matter when you have a 60 PSI blower ramming it in though.

>and the dynamics of flow for a Top Fuel engine are more complex than just air.
So much this. Try simulating air flow in a single runner - and then add fuel. Everything changes. Now try doing that with an eight cylinder engine, which shares a relatively big open plenum, and then add masses of fuel to it, enough fuel to sustain 10000hp. It's a nightmare, and I never even got close to what the pro's did in terms of simulations. And then, even what the professional guys can simulate, the profesional wrenches on Top Fuel teams quickly disprove.

DOHC is pretty much only good for smaller engines that need to rev to make power. Great for small circuit cars and motorcycles terrible for dragsters.

>theres a limit to how fast the air can get out of the way.
No there isn't. The limit is how much heat your material can stand if its hitting the air at high speeds. There has been test rockets hitting about mach 10 before being destroyed and these cars dont even reach mach .5

So i am learning a lot here. The point about why changing from OHV to DOHC would not help is because there is already so much boost that making bigger valves ore more valves wouldn't help not even a little bit. And the reason why we cant have bigger engines that produce more power its because as it is we already cant have more grip out of the tire, right?

As to OP's question, i remember turbo top fuels being tested and banned "for having too much power" And the fastest 0-60 time in the world belongs to an electric car.

>And the fastest 0-60 time in the world belongs to an electric car.
Bullshit. There is no electric car in existence which goes 0-60 faster than a top fuel drag car.

youtube.com/watch?v=I-NCH8ct24U

If you dont wanna believe it at least try googling it instead of just saying its BS when there is proof out there

Disregard my previous comment. I look like a retard. Sorry.

you seem confused, 1.5 seconds is a lot longer than 0.2 seconds

and power or type of engine is not the problem with 0-60 times, it is grip

Top Fuel racecars go 0-300 in 4 seconds. Assuming linear acceleration, that means 0-60 in about 0.8 seconds.

>A Top Fuel dragster accelerates so quickly that its already passed 60 mph by the time the rear tires have crossed the start line (300 inches).

>tfw you will never experience the sheer acceleration of a top fuel drag car

...

whatever you want to believe enjoy being wrong

alanjohnsonperformance.com/cylinder-heads/item/125-426-hemi-stage-vii-top-fuel-cylinder-heads

>570 @ .800 lift

stock B16A head from the 80s
home porting can net over 300

>262 @ .550 lift'

Ive seen K20 heads over 400 and a stock K20 head is around 300

no stock head flows 400 so who gives a shit

500 isnt even that crazy either since there are 600 cfm heads

>people keep bandying around flow like it's the be all end all

It's an important metric, definitely, but intake charge velocity at valve seat is an egregiously looked over factor in engines as a system which work within narrow windows for cycles. You could have a sewer pipe for a port that flows a kajillion cfm but it won't make power.

I realize that but whose gonna go argue 195cc vs 210cc heads when theyre not building an engine

you cant benchrace that

Sit at a red light and have somebody rear end you.

Well kudos if you can dig on the sort, not many people do. Fuck, not even many car guys. And sick fucks like me would argue it because it's the same concept I was getting at, one woefully misunderstood. Pet peeve that irks me, I suppose, like seeing people who ostensibly make their living as car guys yet talk about a hot cam making more power because it has more duration (just duration).

they would be 30,000 horsepower NOS powered machines with rocket engines and ejection seats.

Nah. Ejection seats are too heavy.

>NOS powered machines with rocket engines

>You could also just ditch the 14-71 entirely, and just use turbos
Simply wouldn't work. Nitro engines running such a high percentage fuels need the constant compression a crank driven positive displacement supercharger offers.
If it was turbo, going from 0-100% throttle on green would flood and blow the flame out before the turbo had a chance to develop boost. And when your AFR is near 1.7:1 as the other poster has pointed out, that means filling your cylinder and hydraulicing in an instant.

Bump for armchair engineers

I just googled it and he's not wrong with that number, an old B16 head flows about 240cfm.

>need constant compression
So what, you just spool the turbo's at the starting line, just like any dragracing application. It'd be even easier with nitromethanol, given the huge volume of volume and the relatively high expansion rate.
You don't understand drag cars like this. They don't apply throttle at the start: they're already at 100% throttle, and their transmission is in both reverse and forward at the same time. When they let go of a button, the transmission violently drops out of reverse, sending about 5000hp towards the rear wheels. There's already masses of exhaust volume when the yellows go out.
When the AFR is 1.7:1, and the turo's wouldn't be spooled, then you wouldn't even be injecting that much fuel. Not nearly enough to hydrolock it, that only happens at full throttle/high RPM with an ingnition failure.

Fun fact: Harley Top Fuel bikes exist, and they have the rear cylinder pointed at the rider's chest. When shit goes wrong (like a hydrolock), the rear cylinder jug can just shear off the bolts that connect it to the bottom end of the block, blow it's way through the frame, and basically gut the rider, so they have to wear kevlar vests.

>you just spool the turbo's at the starting line

>sending about 5000hp

This post is so wrong.

Yes. Thanks to a transbrake and copious amounts of exhaust volume, you can start a run with spooled turbo's. Not that you always want too, it can be too much power in some cases.

youtube.com/watch?v=ygbVUEn_mHc
Watch how they engage their transbrake well before breaking the second beams. Then, they apply throttle to build boost, tap their bump box (which releases the transbrake for a fraction of a second) to crawl forward. As they hit the second beam, they're fully spooled - which is saying something as diesel dragsters tend to run well above the 60 PSI that a Top Fuel dragster does. Tree activates, yellows go out, driver releases the transbrake completely, lights go green, car passes the starting line at the desired boost level.

Pic related, somewhere between 4000 and 6000 hp when they start. Only later down the run do they make 10000hp.

Ok yeah i get what you mean but you have to understand that turbos dont spool up to max psi when you rev the engine standing still. That's the point of two step turbo spool up and some anti lag systems for drag cars. Even at max RPM turbos, specially the big ones, cannot produce all the psi.

Why?