Building a 10,000 HP Top Fuel Dragster (Fuel Supply)

hey thanks for joining me today what we're doing uh on the old dragster today is i've finished up the x braces now these are the braces that are mandated by nhra to help control this chassis to keep it from going into yaw as it's going down the track that's so when you turn right it turns right instead of just turning left and turning into a banana what i've done already is i've installed the fuel tank it's cleaned out blown out the whole nine yards and what we're going to do is hook up the main fuel line in this front bay assembly now there's a couple tricks that i've learned along the way that i'm just going to pass on to you guys but this is what we use to actually connect the two metal pipes together there's actually more than two there's let's see here i've got this in one two three four different sections actually including the y pipe that goes to the pump but one thing you don't want to happen is you don't want these things making contact with each other if it does that what it can do is it can give a little bit of a burr and that little burr comes off that aluminum right there and will actually go into the fuel system once it travels through the fuel system it'll make its way all the way down through this pipe down through this the pipe under the deal up through the white pipe into the pump comes out the pump goes through the barrel valve into the engine and plugs the nozzle either in the head the blower the manifold and then boom that's right one little chunk of aluminum can plug a nozzle and cause that to happen so in order for that to happen there's a couple measurements that i make it's really easy on this particular deal here i've already got the piece mounted um the silicone hose piece mounted on the main part that goes underneath the driver's seat and i'm going to go ahead and measure it and mark it on a zip tie then i'll take that piece put the addition of how much how far i want it away from the other pipe and then mark that on the pipe that way i know how far that pipe needs to slide into the other sleeve now the reason why you do this again if these things butt heads together these things will cause a flake of aluminum come off and we'll have issues now you don't want them too far away or this thing can actually suck these things shut and then it's going to start for fuel and it's going to do the same thing it's going to blow up so in order to get this thing to slide i use a little bit of brake clean you don't want to use like a silicone or something like that because then it stays slick once this evaporates then it's going to be silicone right to anodizing and that thing's not going to move a matter of fact it'd probably be kind of a to get back apart and the other thing you don't want to happen you don't want this thing to come apart because all that fuel you know 15 gallons that's in the tank actually will come out and it'll go right towards your driver and you better hope and pray that it don't ignite the other thing is too is that just nitromethane in general you know it's not good to have on your skin or anything else and it will light you up so i've got my front piece which i call towards the driver's apartment in place and now i'm going to be able to you know split the difference between the tank and the other piece of pipe that we just put on now i'll go ahead and finish tightening up the clamps on these other two pieces so i always offset my clamps and i always keep the clamps pointed down towards the ground now why do you do that rob well there's a couple things the these clamps all have like a splice area what you say or an overlap of where it runs on top of each other so you're just going to put those instead of lining them up with each clamp you're going to offset them that way so it doesn't have a fuel have a way of traveling out you know it has to go and make a turn and come back out the other way you're just not lining them up next thing is the reason why you point them down because if the body's on the car when it's up on the projects you can do a quick check on these things from the bottom side that's it you're just trying to make things simple as possible so i'll get my sets uh oriented the way i want go ahead and slide them on the pipes before i actually uh mark these things that way so they're all ready to go and you don't slide that thing on and then fight it back off because you forgot to put the clamps on it so i'll take my silicone piece roughly it's eight inches i'll split it so i know where the center line is and then i'll go ahead and mark the pipe where i want the silicone to end at that waist when i'm sliding this on one way or another i'll know that i have the proper amount put inside of this pipe next i'll go ahead and mark the other end you know roughly we're doing this as a visual just so that we know for a fact that we're going to have that gap in between the two metal pieces of pipe and not have that issue of button each other together this fuel line is about two and a half inches in diameter and when it's just like from this tank to the pump it holds three gallons itself but that's the kind of supply that you need for these dang things so what i did really is i just took some tape and put it around the pipe that way i know how far to slide it back that way in case the mark comes off like when the silicone hose is coming down and things like that it's just kind of idiot proofs it or whatever so i'm going to slide the silicone hoses on both ends of this pipe put it back in the car and then i'm going to try like hell to slide them back off the pipe onto the other pipes and then we'll get them all blocked in there so people ask like how many gallons per minute do these things actually burn well on some parts of the track this thing's got 90 gallons a minute going through it that's 90 gallons a minute going inside the motor if you check out back on some of my other videos you can see what one cylinder looks like on a test bench it's it's really pretty incredible now the more fuel you can shove down its throat the more power it makes because that's where these things get their power from they get it from the nitro methane nitro methane carries its own oxygen and let me tell you what if you can pack it in there and then you can light it it's going to make a big bang so sliding the hoses on it's it's really pretty difficult i'm not going to lie it sucks i don't like it anyway but i got them on i've got in this position where i need to go so i'll go ahead and orient my clamps and you can actually see here where there's a bulge area that's trying to keep these things from sliding apart but i've seen people put new cars together and not have good connections here and this pipe come off and it dumps that whole amount of fuel right on the track anyway i want to explain a couple things here so this right here this is the vent for the tank yep that hole inside that is the vent that hole in the very front is how we tow this thing around and normally there's a wing that sets on the front there so that's how we hook up to the car when we're pulling it around the hole there in the center that right there is for the steering shaft it goes all the way through the tank right up here to the little rack that's up here that's what turns the turns the wheels so now we'll pop the cap off here i want to show you the inside of this thing here's our vent tube yep that's right that tube is solid goes all the way and connects to a tube that goes inside that other piece that's in the front that i showed you and that's how it goes to atmosphere also there's actual pressure that's put on top of this tank as it's going 300 miles an hour down the track now this right here that weld there's a baffle that's inside this tank that baffle goes the length of the tank and what that baffle does is it helps control the fuel on launch and it also plays another part and i'll get into that here in just a second but anyway these tanks are pretty complicated there's a whole shelf that's in there but there's also some holes in the back to where fuel can get towards the back but when this thing is sucking that much fuel you want to be careful about where it can get the fuel and not enter air along with it so when i get done with everything i go ahead and put a label on the tank let everyone know that yep i did it and it's done and it's race ready so here i'll draw a really crude fuel tank for you this back piece here is the outlet which you just saw which is going to go towards the fuel pump now this here is the shelf that's inside the tank and i say a shelf when you look at the top of it there'll be a couple cutouts in the back but basically it's a complete shelf so when you're pouring it in it's coming down and going around the shelf going down towards the bottom of the tank next i'm going to show you that vent tube and how it works so here's the atmosphere in the very front it comes through the tank and then lands up there into the filler cap just like what we talked about now if you think if we didn't have this thing vented this thing sucks so hard it would just collapse this tank into nothing and this happened before when people didn't uncover the fuel vent for these things it just like would suck it completely shut so under acceleration what happens is is that that fuel underneath here is shoved towards the back it can't slosh up towards the top it has to go to the inlet so now you have this great head pressure uh on the inlet of the pump and what that does is it helps it from cavitating this is what cavitation is cavitation is say when you have a bathtub full of water and you un pull the plug out on that thing and you start seeing a swirl of of basically air getting into the drain itself that is cavitation so here let me kind of draw it for you here's a tank drain and what happens is if it doesn't have that head pressure which is the atmosphere and the weight of the water on top of the inlet like when the tub's full you won't see that develop that tornado effect develop but as it gets lower and the less head pressure is on top of that inlet then it's able to go up and suck air and when you have air in the system that is not fuel and so it leans it out it cavitates and it'll blow this thing up so now all the fuel lines are in and i've explained to you guys what the shape and why the fuel tank looks like it does i'm going to go ahead and put all these stringers in so if you understand what these stringers do is basically it's boxing this thing in to where the uprights can't pass each other does that make sense so when you're pushing real hard one direction and you've got you know 2 000 pounds of downforce on the front and you got you know 7 500 on the back and you're turning one direction you want this whole snake to stay straight you want it to react what the driver is inputting into it and that's what's going to keep this from happening now on this particular car it was built last year and we built it out of 0.48 thick tubing where currently a lot of stuff is 0.49 so that actually makes this car a little easier to drive because it the tubing sticker thanks for watching now we're going to install this puppy so stay tuned the control system

Channel: Rob Wendland

Views: 28,763

Keywords: Rob wendland, Top fuel drag racing, Top fuel dragster, NHRA, NHRA drag racing, Top fuel, Dragster, 10000 hp, Larry Dixon 2 seat dragster, Wendland, Supercharger, Funny car drag racing, Billet engine, Nitromethane, John Force

Id: qY4kHa1j5gA

Length: 11min 23sec (683 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021