Every part on a NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series Top Fuel engine takes more abuse than in any other type of racing. It’s the nature of the beast. Even the pushrods can get hurt – although they might have the longest life span of any integral part in the valvetrain. This particular Manton intake pushrod was installed for eliminations at the penultimate NHRA round (of 24) on The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It was being used in the Don Schumacher Racing Matco Tools Top...
As the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series 24-race season wound to a close in early November, the Matco Tools Top Fuel team with driver Antron Brown, a group that had changed ownership twice over the off-season, did so again when it was sold to Don Schumacher Racing just before the penultimate round on The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. That change will likely result in changes to parts distribution, as DSR campaigns two other T/F dragsters for [now] six-time consecutive champion...
The tip of the racing poppet valve is seldom considered, despite having to withstand relatively high contact stresses. Whilst we can say that the contact stresses concerned are generally low compared to other valve train applications, the relative movement between the valve tip and the adjacent component can be low, especially in the case of overhead cam engines where a lash cap or, more rarely, a bucket follower applies the load to the valve.Even in the case of those engines where rockers...
In a recent article in the crankshaft section of the website, I discussed very briefly the methods by which heavy metal counterweighting can be added to crankshafts. Heavy metal is the common term, but a more technically correct description would be dense metal, and these are generally tungsten alloys. The picture which accompanied the aforementioned article showed additional counterweighting mass in the form of cylinders or slugs of tungsten pressed into place in each counterweight. There...
KINETIC ENERGY RECOVERY SYSTEM (KERS) EXPLAINED KERS is a collection of parts which takes some of the kinetic energy of a vehicle under deceleration, stores this energy and then releases this stored energy back into the drive train of the vehicle, providing a power boost to that vehicle. For the driver, it is like having two power sources at his disposal, one of the power sources is the engine while the other is the stored kinetic energy. What is kinetic energy (KE) Kinetic energy is the...