Revenge of the Nerd- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or Top Fuel Fun!

A Top Fueler’s roots supercharger takes as much as 1200 hp to turn at maximum output or about what a built to the hilt 2JZ will do and produces over 80 lbs of boost.  The blast from the exhaust headers alone produces over 1200 lbs of downforce or about twice as much as all of the Cyber EVO’s wings splitter, canards and diffusers together, making a substantial contribution to traction at the big end.

The fuel system for Top Fuel engines is pretty interesting.  The rules prohibit computer controlled engine controls so the fuel mixture is controlled by a complex series of pneumatic valves and electro-mechanical timers which progressively add fuel in stages as the car travels down the track.  Electronic traction control is illegal so the clutch acts like a traction management system.  The clutch pressure plate has multi-stage engagement where its amount of slip is varied by the activation of many sets of borg and beck type fingers with progressively higher and higher clamp loads. The clutch fingers are also controlled by a similar complex array of electro-pneumatic valves and timers so the power can be put down progressively as the car moves down the quarter mile. Tuning the fueling and clutch engagement progression is critical for a fast run as is an art in itself. 

Containing all of this violence is difficult and running it takes a large amount of people doing a precisely choreographed dance that must be done without error or hesitation, any deviation from the drill results in bad things happening, really bad things, all of which are expensive and some can result in serous injury and even death.

We had the privilege of being part of the crew that accompanies the car to the burnout box.  The experience was pretty scary because there is a complicated check list that the crew must do with precision and discipline to just simply stage the car.  Nearly any deviation from this procedure results in the engine blowing up spectacularly. It went something like this.  As the car is pushed to start line behind the burnout put and the body is lifted.  The car is started on methanol with a squirt of gasoline into the butterflies to help it light off initially.  If too much gasoline is squirted in start up, the car will explode.  The engine is cranked over by a huge electric motor, powered off of the support trucks electrical system that is inserted in the blower drive.  The engine is cranked and hopefully starts, when it starts the motor is removed. 
Once the engine fires up and develops a somewhat stable idle, the crew chief switches the master fuel control from its rich start position to lean. If he forgets this step the engine will blow up in seconds. If the driver fiddles with the throttle the slightest bit here, the engine will blow up as well. The crew lowers the body and the driver has to proceed to the burnout box fairly quickly due to the engines lack of cooling system, any dawdling here will cause the engine to blow up.