Nonairbreathing turbine cars

[Ratliff]

Attached are frame grabs of Wayne Knuth's Odyssey turbine dragster match racing the Chi Town Hustler at Union Grove in 1971. Running in the low sevens using only an 800 horsepower Turbonique turbine, the Odyssey's extreme lightweight made it competitive against Funny Cars and some Top Fuel cars. Nonairbreathing turbines are one of the few forms of propulsion that has yet to be used in land speed racing.

[Andy19601]

http://www.almar.easynet.be/turbonique.htm
http://blogs.popularhotrodding.com/6241908/hard-driving/1964-ford-galaxie/index.html

The internet continues too be full of fun information..
Is there a class for a combo with all these different  power adders ?

[Ratliff]

Turbonique turbine bike, page 1

[Ratliff]

Turbonique turbine bike, page 2

[Ratliff]

Turbonique turbine bike, page 3

[Ratliff]

Turbonique turbine bike, page 4

[Ratliff]

Turbonique turbine bike, page 5

[Uncle Jimbo]

Great pics Ratliff.  I'd like to see some dialogue on the subject from some of the knowledgable speed freeks.  How does it work without needing air intake ?

[Ratliff]

Great pics Ratliff.  I'd like to see some dialogue on the subject from some of the knowledgable speed freeks.  How does it work without needing air intake ?

What amounts to a rocket motor powers the turbine, so there is compressor section. No outside air is needed because all the energy required is stored in chemical form inside the vehicle.

[aircap]

Anyone remember the compressed air Funny Car that Mickey Thompson built?

[Ratliff]

Anyone remember the compressed air Funny Car that Mickey Thompson built?

Rocket dragsters used a lot of the same basic components as the Mickey Thompson system, such as a dome regulator, in their systems. The only real difference was instead of the compressed air being used to supercharge a piston engine it pressurized a tank to force the hydrogen peroxide into the rocket motor. A dome regulator is the type you use when you need to flow a large volume of air. In the attached page the dome regulator is the device mounted on top of the crossmember. The device to the right of the dome regulator, with the dial grip on top, is the dome loader regulator. The dome loader regulator sets the output pressure of the dome regulator.

The cool thing (no pun intended) about the Mickey Thompson system was since air was being DECOMPRESSED, it came into the intake manifold cold, thus eliminating the need for an intercooler.

[Glen]

The air system that Mickey Thompson ran was designed and developed by my late friend and partner John Bowen. We ran it in our shop on one of my small block Chevy's to develop the injector system and the pressure differential valve. It was pretty crude at first until Mickey put some money into it and ran it in the funny car. That was about the time other things were going on. John continued with the project as my real job at Douglas aircraft was keeping me tied down to long hours and was unable to stay on the air system.
The big problem was the system was heavy and used a lot of air, K- bottles were changed every couple of runs.