Color me impressed, connecting rod content.

So, this came in with our gauging specialist to get sent out to be thoroughly examined this morning.....

The other side will give away where it came from.

yamaha wrote: The other side will give away where it came from.

So where is the picture of the other side?

Top Fuel dragster?

In reply to EvanB:

First make an attempt at what it is for.....

It is a whopping 2.52 pounds, 2.5" journal, and 7 1/8th inches from center to center. Also has perhaps the finest machined end cap I've ever seen(hardly noticeable)

I'm guessing top fuel as well. They actually get shorter with use.

GameboyRMH wrote: Top Fuel dragster?

LoL, I type all that out and you get it in a lucky guess......

Excuse the E36 M3ty camera phone pictures, but its for one of the Schumacher cars. They claim to get compacted 3 thousandths of an inch each run...

Oh, also something with DSM markings that is probably reliable.

3 thou, PER RUN? I knew they got shortened to discard pretty quickly, but not that quickly!

I'm going with diesel cummins tractor pull motor

holy cow they have measurable shortening with each run

Kenny_McCormic wrote: 3 thou, PER RUN? I knew they got shortened to discard pretty quickly, but not that quickly!

Indeed....they're also serial numbered to keep track each rod.

Every time I learn anew fact about top fuel cars it blows my mind.

Lancer007 wrote: Every time I learn anew fact about top fuel cars it blows my mind.

this

I got started at a shop just as they were winding down a T/A campaign. Buckets of aluminum rods going to the scrap yard, lifed out.

Sure, you can have a couple. Feel lucky?

Not in my engine!

In reply to Knurled:

I would taken a bunch to make auto themed items with.

I can barely see the end cap seam in the angled picture, can't see it at all in the straight-on shots!

In reply to jsquared:

It is very difficult to see it in person while looking for it. At first I questioned if it had even been cut yet.

Its cut in a small block serration and appears to have been final machined after being torqued down.

Hey cool, I know some of the guys at that shop..

All that shortening in less than a thousand revolutions. Wow.

oldopelguy wrote: All that shortening in less than a thousand revolutions. Wow.

They do way more than that for each run - it's not just from the start to finish, but there's some warmup and staging beforehand.

Still you can be sure they have less than half an hour of runtime between rebuilds.

That's some serious force being transferred through the rod. I know this next part is blasphemy, but I just don't see the point of dragsters any more. Sure it's cool to see exhaust flames, I love the ground shaking etc but spending that kind of money to drive for less than 5 seconds? Nope, just not seeing it.

I came in here to guess Top Fuel, but I was treed.

I toured Kalitta's TopFuel/Funny Car shop a few months ago.There were racks and racks of pistons, rods and clutch plates everywhere. There had to be a thousand of each. Every run on every clutch plate is logged along with the track and weather conditions for use in dialing in which plates to use for each run.There was one worker inspecting pistons. There had to be two hundred pistons sitting on the work bench and I don't know how many more in boxes under every table.I'm not a drag racing fan but the level of detail I saw on the tour was pretty impressive.

Curmudgeon wrote: That's some serious force being transferred through the rod. I know this next part is blasphemy, but I just don't see the point of dragsters any more. Sure it's cool to see exhaust flames, I love the ground shaking etc but spending that kind of money to drive for less than 5 seconds? Nope, just not seeing it.

drag racers feel the same way about dodging cones in a fwd economy car in a parking lot on a sunday morning..

GameboyRMH wrote:

oldopelguy wrote: All that shortening in less than a thousand revolutions. Wow.

They do way more than that for each run - it's not just from the start to finish, but there's some warmup and staging beforehand. Still you can be sure they have less than half an hour of runtime between rebuilds.

It's pretty close. Especially under power. For a run under power, they spin less than 1000 times. Well, back in the old 1/4 days.

(a 6 seconds at 10,000 rpm is just 1000 revs. and they are running under 5 seconds)

the full 1/4 mi record was 4.4 and the 1000' record is 3.7 sec. at something like 330 mph ..

so yeah, fewer than 1000 revolutions under load

people talk about what a rush it is to leave an aircraft carrier via the catapult … it has nothing on a top fuel dragster or a top fuel funny car … probably doesn't come close to the g-forces of an alcohol dragster