Newsletter No.066 F500 displayed in Tokyo, Top Fuel Dragsters
Newsletter Number 66
10th November 2003
Hello and welcome to another newsletter.
Hello again. This newsletter we have some amazing facts about Top Fuel Dragsters. As we all know Mercedes-Benz are heavily commited to the Mclaren West Formula One team. I wonder what a Mercedes-benz drag car engine would perform like?
Also we have the release of the F500 and an interesting review of the largest online Vehicle Classified in Germany.
Thanks, John Green.
F500 Research vehicle.
At the recent Tokyo Motor show Daimler Chrysler displayed there new research vehicle the F500. See the press release below for more info:
At the 37th Tokyo Motor Show Mercedes-Benz will present its new F 500 research vehicle which provides insights into the automotive technology of tomorrow and beyond. Packaged as a modern four-door fastback saloon, the F 500 Mind mobile research lab showcases more than a dozen ideas for enhancing safety, drive technology and comfort. The raft of innovations extends all the way from the night vision system with infrared laser headlamps to two-way doors and a programmable multivision display in the cockpit. Electronic accelerator and brake pedals, an interior pillar which provides structural rigidity and an ultrasound driver information system are further features being tested by Mercedes-Benz in the F 500. The DaimlerChrysler researchers will be using this pioneering vehicle to conduct the first practical tests of these innovative systems and pave the way for their commercialisation.
With a body length of 5092 millimetres and a wheelbase of 2965 mm, the F 500 offers a significant gain in legroom in the rear compared with a conventional present-day saloon in this class. This was made possible by using innovative-design electronic accelerator and brake pedals, which take up much less space than their conventional equivalents.
The multivision display in the cockpit of the F 500 forms the centrepiece of an innovative instrumentation and control system which offers the driver more flexible information delivery and at the same time reduces fatigue. The dials and displays in the instrument cluster are programmable and their images can be optically superposed or combined with the aid of a semitransparent mirror. An advanced-design voice-operated control system and an ultrasound-based driver information system take convenience even further. The ultrasound technology targets the sound at the driver so that only he or she can hear the information from the navigation system, the traffic news and other sound-based information sources, while the front passenger and rear passengers remain undisturbed.
In the dark or in poor visibility, the innovative night vision system projects its images onto the right-hand display. The night vision system consists of two infrared laser headlights on the front of the vehicle which "illuminate" the road with their invisible light over a range of up to 150 metres, and a camera on the windscreen. This allows the driver to spot hazards much earlier than in a vehicle operating on conventional dipped headlamps. Thus Night Vision offers further opportunities for making night driving safer.
The drive system in the research vehicle is a state-of-the-art diesel hybrid unit with a total power output of 234 kW. In the European driving cycle it uses up to 20 per cent less fuel than a comparable CDI engine.
Website administration.
This artical was in the last newsletter, we have seen heaps of you log on and fix up your details, just in case you haven't found time to check your details here are the instructions to do so again.
Regular newsletter readers will know that back in April we launched the new version of our website after 3 months of trailing it. As I do all of the content myself, we had a hold up when I hurt my back and found that editing the site was rather painful, as I could not sit for long periods of time. On the whole I have been very happy with how things have gone, however the drop down box's on the subscription page have never been right. At long last we have this fixed.
The idea of collecting this information when you subscribed was so that we could send you offers of parts on special and inform you of cars that we are dismantling that are relevant to your car. No point telling you that we have Roundie and Finnie tailshaft couplings on special if you own a later model car is there?
We can also use the system to let people know what cars we have for sale, but only let those who are looking for a certain model know rather than sending e-mail to everybody. We are aware that junk e-mail is a major hassle these days and wish to be as responsible as possible, whilst at the same time promoting our business.
However to make this all work we need all the Newsletter Subscribers to log on and check/Correct their details. Due to the drop down boxes not being configured correctly when you first subscribed we may be send subscribers the wrong information.
To do this please follow these steps:
- Open up another window by pressing Control and "N" at the same time. This allows you to read the instructions at the same time as changing your details.
- On the right hand side of the page you will see several box's, the lowest one has "Member Login" on it. Type in your e-mail address and password and then click "Login". If you don't know your password, don't type anything into the password box and click "Login". The system will e-mail you a reminder about your password instantly, so go and check your mail and then follow the instructions again.
- Once you are logged in you should see some blue text in the Login box that says ""Edit my details". Click on the blue text.
- Please check all your details and then go to the bottom of the page where you will find five fields that allow us to know what sort of cars you own and what sort of cars you would like to own. Each field has a "drop down" box with multiple choices. You can select two cars that you would like to know about parts for and three cars that you dream about owning. If you select any of these you will receive information on cars we have for sale that suit your needs and on specials that we have that suit your car. As mentioned above the idea is that we don't send the wrong information out to the wrong people.
- Finally there are four boxes that need to have ticks in them if you want to be notified about the Newsletter, New arrivals for sale, New arrivals for dismantling and Specials. If you select all the ring things and tick all the right boxes we will only notify you about New arrivals and specials that are relevant to you car or the car that you would like to own!
- Click save (lower left hand corner of the screen) and you are done.
Fact's of the week.
No funnies this week, instead some very serious facts about Top Fuel Dragsters.........
You don't have to be a drag racing fan to appreciate these statistics.
a.. One dragster's 500-inch Hemi makes more horsepower then the first 8 rows at the Daytona 500.
b.. Under full throttle, a dragster engine consumes 1 ½ gallons of nitro per second, the same rate of fuel consumption as a fully loaded Boing747, but with 4 times the energy density.
c.. The supercharger takes more power to drive then a stock hemi makes.
d.. With nearly 3000 CFM (cubic feet per minute) of air being rammed in by the supercharger on
overdrive, the fuel mixture is compressed into nearly-solid form before ignition.
e.. Therefore the cylinders run on the verge of hydraulic lock.
f.. Dual magnetos apply 44 amps to each spark plug. This is the equivalent output of an arc welder in each cylinder.
a.. At stoichiometric (exact) 1.7:1 air/fuel mixture (for nitro), the flame front of nitro methane measures 7050 degrees F.
b.. Nitro methane burns yellow. The spectacular white flame seen above the exhaust stacks at night is raw burning hydrogen, dissociated from atmospheric water vapour by the searing exhaust gases.
c.. Spark plug electrodes are totally consumed during a pass. After ½ way, the engine is dieseling from compression plus the glow of exhaust valves at 1400 degrees F.
d.. The engine can only be shut down by cutting off its fuel flow.
e.. If spark momentarily fails early in the run, unburned nitro builds up in those cylinders and then explodes with a force that can blow cylinder heads off the block in pieces or blow the block in half.
f.. Dragsters twist the crank (torsionally) so far (up to 20 degrees at the rear end of the crank) that sometimes cam lobes are ground offset from front to rear to re-phase the valve timing somewhere closer to synchronisation with
the pistons.
g.. To exceed 300mph in 4.5 seconds dragsters must accelerate at an average of over 4G's. But in reaching 200 mph well before ½ track, launch acceleration is closer to 8G's.
h.. If all the equipment is paid off, the crew worked for free, and for once NOTHING BLOWS UP, each run costs $1000.00 per second.
i.. Dragsters reach over 300 miles per hour before you have read this sentence.
j.. Top Fuel Engines ONLY turns 540 revolutions from light to light!
k.. The redline is actually quite high at 9500rpm.
l.. To give you an idea of this acceleration, the current Top Fuel dragster elapsed time record is 4.477 seconds for the quarter mile. (400mt)
m.. This means that you could be coming across the starting line in your average SL55 AMG "twin-turbo" Mercedes at 200 mph (on a FLYING START) and the dragster would BEAT you to the finish line FROM A DEAD
STOP in a Quarter mile distance!
Cars for dismantling
The following cars have arrived to be dismantled:
W123 250 sedan 1978 model. South African production, was very rusty but had a nice interior that has already been sold.
W116 350SE, neat car but very tired
W108 280SE 69 model, rusty body but an excellent engine and transmission, good deep red MB-tex interior
W126 380SE 83 model, light front hit but enough to right it off. Excellent engine that had the heads done about 50000kms ago and a very neat set of genuine 14" alloys with near new tyres on the front. Grey leather interior in poor condition.
Links of the week.
The link of the week is the German site http://www.mobile.de/ this is the largest online classified for cars in Germany. When I did the research for this artical they had 743.432 vehicles listed for sale. If you want to just search yourself, then you can either chance your German or use the AltaVista bablefish translating service. Click here and type mobile.de into the "Translate a Webpage" box. Select German to English and away you go!
Or you can have try to find these interesting cars from there site. I cant work out from the search page if each car has an item number to search by so you will have to go to the search page and type in the modell (ie: 190D) then make sure you click "Oldtimer" down the bottom. Click on "Suche starten" and away you go.....
- Check out the red/orange190D, it does not look very special from the first picture, but if you click on the "weitere bilder" or "further pictures" link you will see what makes it so interesting.
- I found a very unique 300SE W112 sedan with strange seats. Read the text to see that the car was from France. It appears to me that the car is the very rare LWB version of the W112 sedan. Also I have never seen a front seat like that before.
- I have also never seen a stretch 230S W111 sedan before either. Binz made a limited run of W110 200D sedans to be used as taxis in 1967. I have no idea who made this one, however I doubt that it is a factory made item.
- There is a very interesting 130H. The H stands for Hinten which is the German word for "rear" as that is where the engine is. According to the text this car was restored in Australia!
- Any body for a challenge? The 200 cabriolet should keep you out of trouble for a while....
- And finally a totally restored 300c that was delivered new to Burma! It is RHD as Burma was a British colony. Anybody got the money to bring it back to Australia?
Three new cars this week but one is sold already! The first is a totally amazing 380SE W126 sedan. This is a stunning one owner car with only 136000kms for new. Silver duco and grey leather that looks like brand new. It has perfect Mercedes dealer service history and drive great.
Second car is a E220 Limited Edition sedan also in Silver with Grey leather. The Limited Edition version of the E220 was a run out model as the new E230 W210 version was due out in early 1996. They had the lot, soft leather, twin air bags, Walnut timber, cruise control, etc, etc.
The third car is a 300E that we have taken a deposit on. We also have a C220 Sport coming late this week.
Click here to see all the cars for sale.
The following cars have recently arrived for sale:
380SE 1985 sedan only 136000kms!
Also in stock we have:
Collection of three factory Stretch Mercedes-Benz's
So that's it for another newsletter. Hope you liked what you saw. If you have any ideas or want to contribute any articles, pictures or other material please e-mail me here. Also, don't forget that you can check out the old newsletters here
Thanks, John Green.
