Re: tourque versus horsepower

Aug 27, 2003 43 Replies

It long sense diverted into theoretical discussion of HP vs. Torque.

Why should you care what your daily driver RPM is? As long as the engine is designed for the RPM it needs for power who cares whether it has a 1K redline or a 50K redline?

The important bit is the HP curve and gearing. As long as the gears keep you in the meat of the HP curve as you go up them you get good performance.

Don't laugh. That day will come.

By the ol' low-tech butt dyno. 8^)

Or for more precision, install a G-meter and learn where the acceleration curves for adjacent gears cross - those are your shift points.

Bill Putney (to reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with "x")

This article seems to explain the relationship between Torque and HP quite well, and if I understand it correctly, you can't have HP without Torque

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I think by the second paragraph they've gotten confused (though I do believe they have a point about HP being somewhat overemphasized).

They say "What really dictates the performance of a vehicle is the engine's torque output."

That would be true for ENGINE performance. Vehicle performance (and I guess they mean acceleration in a staright line from a dead stop?) requires torque delivered to the ROAD by the TIRES.

Carl

1 Lucky Texan

canuckguy wrote:

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