I've killed a 3850 CB. The levers break after a while. Peter from South Bend clutch told me it wouldn't last. 28k and I had to put another pressure plate in. 94-95 hydros are bigger than the later ones.
Lol, yeah, I was at the AMA Superbike race roadraces Friday - Sunday. I heard quite a few loud ducati dry clutches there. Nice work bobdog! TROGDOR could've given you a hand heating up parts and using that big beefy arm to R&R that Cummins clutch super easy.
NHRA top fuel and funny cars run 6 clutch plates with 5 floaters and burn them up completely in a sub 4 second pass. They slip them the first 660 feet then lock up solid after that. Guesstimate is 12,000 HP.
Fun trivia, that engine is pretty much spent after one pass. Anyone care to guess how many times it rotates during that pass? Excluding idle time and burnout of course.
rev limited to 8000 rpm, 4 seconds runtime so 8000 divided by 60 =133.333333 revs per second 4 second run 4 x 1.333333 = 533.333 revolutions
also if you follow it closely, the teams shoot for 1 minute 20 seconds run time before staging. this is to regulate the engine and clutch heat build up. they try to be consistent because of clutch heat mainly. the engines are started on alcohol and then switched to nitro. at full fuel load the engine is in hydrolock. if a Haybusa, the fastest street bike, was to run flat out across the starting line to trip the lights a funny car from a standing start would catch it and pass it by half track. the intake exhaust valves have a lift of over 2 inches.
engine HP is controlled by timing, head gasket thickness and fuel curve. This is minimal because if you decrease the HP to much you induce tire shake, so they slip the clutch, which causes the tire into a controlled slipping.
Fwiw, all stock bikes, even hayabusa's are electronically limited to 186 mph. That's stock though. Still, these top fuel dragsters are insane. It's a purpose built machine, meant only to annihilate quarter miles at a time. An all around, will never beat a purpose built machine unless it breaks.
on a good run a funny car will be traveling 280 mph at the 1/8 mile. top fuel is quicker ET, funny cars are faster MPH
One of these days, when the boys are old enough, I'm gonna take them down to a drag strip for some top fuel action.
if you want to see what happens when things go wrong google Beckman makes highlight reel with big boomer broken camshaft, ignited all the fuel in the manifold
One thing being learned.... the extra rotating mass on the trans side is reinforcing the need for for double clutching.
Perhaps that's why the stock hydraulics die so quickly actuating one of these? Stiffer diaphragm and 2x the cycles = death of a slave cylinder?
