A purported e-mail from Bill Neely to David E. Davis, Jr., as received from Joe Werheim, Northeast Ohio AROC.

A lesson in acceleration.

But first some useful (useless??) information:
• One Top Fuel Dragster 500 cubic inch (8.2 liter) Hemi engine makes more horsepower than the first 4 rows of race cars at the Daytona 500 race, put together.
• Under full throttle, a Top Fuel Dragster engine consumes 1.5 gallons (6 liters) of nitro methane per second; a fully loaded 747 consumes jet fuel at the same rate with 25% less energy (power) being produced.
• A stock Dodge 426 cubic inch (7.0L) Hemi V8 engine cannot produce enough power to drive the dragster’s supercharger.
• With 3,000 CFM (85 000lt per second) of air being rammed in by the supercharger on overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into a near-solid form before ignition. Cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock at full throttle.
• At the stoichiometric 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture for nitro methane the flame front temperature measures 7,050 degrees F (3,900 degrees Celsius).
• Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapor by the searing exhaust gases.
• Dual magnetos supply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the output of an arc welder in each cylinder. Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass.
• After half way, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1,400 degrees F (740 degrees Celcius). The engine can only be shut down after cutting the fuel flow.
• If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in the affected cylinder and then explodes withsufficient force to blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or split the block in half.
• In order to exceed 300 mph (480kph) in 4.5 seconds, dragsters must accelerate at an average of over 4G’s. In order to reach 200 mph (320kph) well before half-track, the launch acceleration approaches 8G’s.
• Dragsters reach over 300 mph (480kph) before you have completed reading this sentence.
• Top Fuel engines turn approximately 540 revolutions from start light to finish light.
• Including the burnout the engine must only survive 900 revolutions under load.
• The red line is actually quite high at 9,500 rpm.
• The Bottom Line: Assuming all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs an estimated $1,000.00 per second. The current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.441 seconds for the quarter mile (400 meters). The top speed record is 333.00 mph (536 kph) as measured over the last 66 feet (20 meters) of the run.

Scenario, the newsletter of the Kansas City chapter of AROC, has been running a series written by friends of the editors, Phyllis and Bruce Tilden, in a silver spider. Join Australians Laurie and MaryAlice Jones as they wade through the logistics of how to gettheir 1971 1750 Spider from Oz to Africa for the Classic Safari Challenge rally.
In this issue, they talk about getting the car itself ready to go they a rally across the southern African continent in an Alfa Spider. We begin with the preparation of the car.

Classic Safari Challenge

by Laurie Jones

Part One - Preparation and Logistics

With most of the logistics behind us, attention has turned to the all important car preparation to ensure an enjoyable event. The Spider was delivered to Avanti Spares with a long list of recommendations by the event organizers and confirmed by our Great Endeavour experiences. This was then modified or added to by Richard Anderson based on his broad experience of preparing for, and competing in numerous local and international rallies.
Conscious of the relative rarity of right hand drive 1750 Spiders, and used to working with historically significant buildings, I was keen to see the work undertaken, as far as possible, in accordance with good conservation principles. These are generally accepted as “doing as much work as necessary, but as little as possible”, that is, not compromising the original integrity by making unnecessary changes, and “ensuring that necessary changes are reversible in the future, or are readily identifiable from the original fabric.“ To achieve this, most of the original interior trim has been removed for later reinstatement after the event, and new fittings have generally been bolted for later removal if required.

My first job was to remove both seats, seat belts, floor mats, sill strips, rear speakers, interior trim panels and fuel tank. From then on, my role has been occasional cleaning, de-rusting, priming, painting, trim, odds and ends, and finishing touches, with Richard dealing with all the mechanical and fabrication issues. The full extent of work, in approximate order of importance and sequence of tackling it, is as follows: