cool article about using hydrazine and nitromethane in NHRA

[muscl car]

pretty cool article about the fuel cars in the 1960's when NHRA teams were experimenting with hydrazine as fuel for their race cars . like when you noticed a green header flame that was hydrazine not nitro !!!

http://www.dragzine.com/tech-stories/fuel-cooling-ignition-tech/flashback-friday-the-story-of-the-leathal-fuel-called-hydrazine/

 

[rwild1967]

didn't the air force use that in JATO units around the WWII time frame?

cool atrical. jad no idea they used it in cars.

Hows the weather there in sunny CA man?

 

[muscl car]

H70 has been used in miltary aircraft for quite some time and even used i believe in F16's APU's .there's rumors of H70 being used in NHRA fuel classes as little as 7 years ago like ron capps and he had some very severe engine explosions about that time

weather here is warm for about 3-4 hours then gets down right friggin cold here .last couple weeks it's been in the high 20's low 30's until 9am then warms up until noon time then plummets right back down !!

 

[Alex71RS]

Hydrazine is some nasty stuff. I worked around it alot when we built the first two B-2 Bombers at Northrop. They were still designing the APU systems, and for the interm fix, they installed Hydrazine APU systems in the right hand weapons bays. Everytime I had to go into the weapons bay for preflight checks, I was scared to death. The APUs were labeled EVERYWHERE with the skull/crossed bones placards with huge warning labels. We went to many classes and seminars on the stuff, and all of the info we were told was that it was deadly if you smelled the stuff. They said that if you smelled apricots, you were in serious trouble.

As far as it being used in the Fuel classes, it would have to be EXTREMELY low percentages of Hydrazine mixed with Nitromethane. The stuff is incredible, because when it burns, it makes it's own oxygen, thus the reason why it was used as rocket fuel. It could still create maximum rocket engine performance in low/zero oxygen environments (i.e: extreme altitudes/space).

As a side note, when I used to race 125 shifter karts, one of the rules in the fuels section of the IKF rulebook was "NO HYDRAZINE". Could you imagine the first tech official who found that out the hard way when he did the post-race fuel check? He probably opened the fuel cap and hit the deck.