The exhaust fumes from this dragster made my eyes tear up! What kind of fuel is it burning?

[SHARKBITEATTACK]

Also why is the gentleman squirting fluid into the carbs and giving the driver signals? Part of the start up process or something?

Cacklefest - Vintage Nitromethane Front Engine Slingshot Dragsters Warming up at SEMA - Magicar [4K]

[snfaulkner]

Nitro-methonal I’m assuming. Can’t watch the vid right now, but Nitro sure does choke you if you get a face full of it.

[Just_Asking_Questions]

It’s nitro, as snfaulker notes. I believe the squirt bottle is alcohol, possibly to be sure the nitro is gone before shutdown.

Given that, I think cacklefests are the stupidest things.

[jz78817]

@SHARKBITEATTACK

Also why is the gentleman squirting fluid into the carbs and giving the driver signals? Part of the start up process or something?

https://youtu.be/rxElxTTHGpI?t=1m18s

They burn nitromethane (up to 90% with the balance methanol.) And since nitro is prone to detonation they run excessively rich fuel:air mixtures, which means the exhaust contains a lot of nitric acid. It’s the nitric acid which makes your eyes sting and irritates your breathing passages.

And the bottle has plain methanol in it. They can’t start the engines on nitro because it’s surprisingly hard to ignite via spark; the risk is that cylinders would get loaded up with nitro, then if one of them got close to hydro lock the nitro would detonate and blow the heads off the engine. So they get it running and up to speed on methanol, then turn on the nitro pumps.

[Robot_Arm]

@jz78817

They burn nitromethane (up to 90% with the balance methanol.) And since nitro is prone to detonation they run excessively rich fuel:air mixtures, which means the exhaust contains a lot of nitric acid. It’s the nitric acid which makes your eyes sting and irritates your breathing passages.

And the bottle has plain methanol in it. They can’t start the engines on nitro because it’s surprisingly hard to ignite via spark; the risk is that cylinders would get loaded up with nitro, then if one of them got close to hydro lock the nitro would detonate and blow the heads off the engine. So they get it running and up to speed on methanol, then turn on the nitro pumps.

TL;DR: Don’t stand anywhere near one of these things.

[jz78817]

also, the OP’s vid is of a “nostalgia” dragster; these are ones built the same as old-style dragsters from the early days of Top Fuel. they don’t have very powerful ignition systems like modern Top Fuelers do, so they have to run on “warm up” fuel for several minutes (gas or alcohol) to get some heat into the engine. otherwise the nitro won’t ignite reliably.

modern Top Fuelers only run for a few seconds on “warm up” fuel before kicking over to nitro.

edit:

@Robot_Arm

TL;DR: Don’t stand anywhere near one of these things.

it’s a rite of passage to see how long of a “Baptism by Nitro” you can withstand the first time you go to an NHRA race.

it ain’t long.

[Johnny_L.A]

In my current caffeine-deprived state, I misread ‘dragster’ as ‘daughter’.

[Gbro]

Isn’t it a right of passage to stand in the pit area when one of these Beauties fires up for tuning??
And sometimes there will be some dude standing close in and not reacting at all, just breathing in those fumes!
I last a minuet at about 20 ft. back.