My son and I got a tour of the Kalitta race shop in Ypsilanti, Michigan this morning. I've casually followed drag racing for 40 years, but this tour was really interesting.We got to talk to several employees about the various mechanical bits of the funny cars and fuelers, wandered into one of the engine assembly rooms,and chatted with one crew chief.
Some things we noticed
-they must have thousands of clutch plates for four cars
-hundreds of pistons and rods
-several dozen engine blocks ,including a recently "ventilated" one.
Some interesting facts.
-fuel pumps run at the rate of 102 gpm
-fuel pressure on the inlet side of the pump reaches 40 psi due to the G force alone
-fuel line to the pump is 2.5 inch tubing
-they don't know how fast the cars are in a quarter mile anymore, but are positive it would run out of fuel before the quarter and explode!
Anyone in SE Michigan can call and arrange tours . Weekdays only, regular business hours, and only on the weeks where they aren't racing the following weekend.
Ian F
UltimaDork
6/5/14 1:35 p.m.
In reply to Jay_W:
Horsepower is a function of fuel burned. 8000 HP = a lot of fuel.
If you want another tour that is not too far from you...
ThorSport Nascar Truck team is based in Sandusky, OH
They do private tours of groups less than 10 with two days advanced notice.
http://www.thorsport.com/contact-thorsport.shtml
ABOUT THORSPORT RACING:
ThorSport Racing, based in a state-of-the-art 100,000-square-foot facility in Sandusky, Ohio, is the longest-tenured NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team. ThorSport, which has run in the Truck Series since 1996, in 2014 runs the No. 88 Menards Toyota Tundra driven by 2013 drivers' champion Matt Crafton, the No. 98 Nextant Aerospace/Smokey Mountain Herbal Snuff/Carolina Nut Co./Curb Records Toyota Tundra driven by Johnny Sauter and the No. 13 Estes Toyota Tundra driven by Jeb Burton in the Truck Series.
Ian F wrote:
In reply to Jay_W:
Horsepower is a function of fuel burned. 8000 HP = a lot of fuel.
You need to keep up......they're quoting 10,000 HP these days.
Since they can't dyno that kind of number, it's probably an educated guess.
That's a lot of aftermarket parts to get the box hp number up that high 
