Some other info on this insane machine. I want one even more now lol.
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stold this good read. I'm guessing from the other post that many of you actually aren't familiar with Turboniques units so I figured I should start an actual post that does nothing but explain them. I have more information than I know what to do with and I'm not nearly intelligent enough to decipher the technical stuff without my Cap'n Crunch secret decoder ring. I'll do what I can and if you have more technical questions, let me know and I'll make up a lie that sounds believable. As the Kloosterfookian National Ambassor to the United States, I have that authority. You can trust me.
Turboniques as a company is best explained through this fine article...
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk...real_acme.html
The company made a variety of mind-numbing time machines out of necessity. Tivo did not yet exist so a means of actual time travel was required. If you owned a boat, snowmobile, hovercraft, go kart, dragster, an actual alien spacecraft, or even a school bus that needed to be somewhere slightly before it left, there weren't many options in the sixties. Sure, they had mushrooms and LSD if you wanted to pretend, but if you genuinely needed intergalactic type speed, you had superchargers, turbochargers, and if you were lucky, there might have even been a really big hill you could go down to pick up a few ticks on the speedo. Rockets were reserved for more mundane tasks like space travel by such non-visionaries as the folks at NASA.
The story is that rockets found there way onto drag cars by accident. When an engine being transported to the Kennedy Space Center had a chance meeting with a carelessly discarded cigarette from the delivery driver, an 18 wheeled Ford tractor/trailer suddenly became capable of quadruple digit highway speeds. It was a surprise to everyone. The semi was not recovered for further studies as it actually punched a hole in the space-time continuum and disappeared forever from our known universe. The thought however is that the rocket engine could perhaps be scaled back to a degree and placed on a slightly more aerodynamic prospect...such as..say a car.
So to that end, I will spare you the formalities of the lesser turbonique offerings but will say that they are significant because they are designed to add power without robbing your actual engine of any of it's output. As opposed to crank driven superchargers, the Turbonique offerings supplied there own power source in the form of Thermolene fuel and electric motor driver superchargers. That alone was pretty high tech in it's day and certainly made sense. It is that pattern of thought that led Turbonique engineers to the delightful conclusion that, not only should forced induction not rob power from the main drive engine, but that they should instead be completely independent of the main engine...if indeed an internal combustion engine or other power source was even desired at all. Why not just attach a rocket to the rear axle? What could possibly go wrong? The result of such prudent thinking was the 1000 Horsepower Turbo-Booster Axle, or as it would later be called by it's friends, the Drag Axle.
The Turbonique models TB-28-A, TB-28-B, and TB-28-C. Competitively priced from $1860.00 to $3595.00 it made more sense to buy this fine Turbonique product than to go through the hassle of acquiring a decommisioned NASA rocket and fabricating your own setup over a course of long weekends. The power was considered adequate on the Turbo-Booster Axles with 1000 brake horsepower and 1030 ft. lbs of torque available at the flip of a switch. The turbine unit weighed less than 100 pounds and mated publicly to a standard quick change rearend center section via a stock Borg Warner "Sprag Clutch" that allowed the turbine to "free wheel" ,like you did on your Schwinn Stingray down that aforementioned big hill, when the the turbine was not in use. When the turbine was engaged through a manually operated dash switch, the clutch would seamlessly engage at any speed to provide that much needed 1000 horsepower one needs when passing in a school zone or making 7 second blasts down the 1320. There is no "off button" and the turbine will continue to deliver you to God unless you turn off the manual switch on the dash to end fuel supply. There is however, a speed sensitive switch that will temporarily halt fuel supply to the turbine if shaft speeds exceed the manufacturer governed 7200 RPM. After all, there is no need to be ludicrous. Surprisingly, stock 1939 to 1951 3/4 ton Ford or Studebaker truck axles can be used with the Turbo-Boost Axle. That makes sense of course because it's not like this is rocket science or anything.
What do numbers like 1000HP really mean? Ask Jack McClure. His fully accessorized 1966 Chevelle weighed in at a whopping 3600 pounds with it's 396 engine. That engine didn't even operate when it came time to blast down the track while turning out the quarter mile in 9.41 seconds at 143.12 MPH. Of course Jack has the whimpy 850 HP version of the drag axle too so he could have gone faster like Roy Drew did in the Black Widow VW Beetle. This is the car that gained fame for kicking Tommy Ivo's ass in the quad nailhead powered dragster. That's right...1600 plus cubic inches of pure dragster spanked by a freakin VW. Roy Drew cranked out a 9.36 at 168 MPH in the not so aerodynamic rolling boob called the Black Widow. He later went even faster, seeing speeds of 183 MPH 200 feet BEFORE the traps, but become airborne and crossed the line in a series of time consuming barrel rolls. Those aren't recommended for low E.T. drag racing in case you didn't know. The good news is that drinks were actually served during the limited and unscheduled flight of this particular Volkswagen. That bad news is that the drink was Roy Drew's urine.
Anyway, I've never seen production numbers on the Turbonique drag axle but I'm guessing production was somewhere short of potential due to it's being almost immediately banned by the NHRA and for allegedly having safety issues in the form of pesky explosions. I know of four in existence right now and know that one of the old drag cars still exists without it's drag axle.
