wraith

i think that effects acceleration...because your at max tourqe while HP is increasing.. ..right?



this is a turbo BMW's (turbo) dyno....see how wide the power curve is? this car runs mid 12's all day long.

DJ Rotor

Yes it will, since hp is directly related to torque.



As long as your gearbox is such that when you upshift you don't fall off the torque plateau you'll be okay. I think the S2000's main problem on the dragstrip is that . . . well, is that it's on the dragstrip. Not it's natural environment. Very hard to launch. But some people have managed high 13s stock, which if you plug the numbers into a hp/et calculator, is about right.



J

gazellis

Physics in highschool and college always gave me a headache and that article is no exception.



I believe I will take some Advil now.

rfreeman27

the way i thought the relationship worked is



torque is how quickly you can make horsepower. thus the s2k with no torque, it takes forever to get the power out.



guess thats a little wrong though, because horsepower is really a measurement of time?

DJ Rotor

Power is the rate at which work is done. (Or work per unit time, you could say.) Work is force exerted over distance. Force is, well, force. So if you go out to the school flagpole and try to twist it, you will exert a force (torque) but do no work. However if you do manage to twist it, you will have done work, and the speed at which you can twist it is dependent on power - in other works, how fast you can do work.



J

kkw4p

Sweet. I learned something today.

1bad180sx

yes everyone says the S2000 is not in its natural environment on the drag strip... but why?? I mean, if horsepower is the only number that matters, then why can't the S2000 muster a 14-flat magazine time instead of a 14.7??



If you have a broad torque curve that holds on, you will make more HP where it counts. Just like peak torque doesn't mean much, neither does peak HP. Making more HP for a longer time, then having the car geared to operate in that area is what makes a car fast.



Torque makes the HP at different RPM. If the torque is very high at very high RPM, then hell, you're gonna have a LOT of HP. HP keeps climbing even after torque falls off because you make HP at an RPM.



What I mean is this: If the torque curve is not a curve but flat, HP will climb infinitely until you shift. It will never fall off at the end unless the torque falls off. If you make very little torque until say, 7000 RPM, your HP will be hurt until that point. Now imagine a car that runs from 6000 to 9000 in each gear, but makes peak power at 9000 and only half that at 6000. This could equal a pretty slow car. Many people say this is whats wrong with the high-HP Supras. They don't use enough of the power over a long enough time... then you have 800hp cars running 11's and such.

DJ Rotor

Yep I completely agree.



The only reason I said the S2000 isn't happy on the dragstrip (well aside from the obvious which is that it's designed for road courses) is that it is, so they say, very difficult to launch. I >think< that's just because people aren't used to high-RPM engines. Never driven one so I could be wrong.



J

1bad180sx

I'll take an S2000, and then drop my 395rwhp 362ft/lbs SR20DET under the hood!

Baldy

I nearly fell asleep twice before I was half done, so I couldn't finish reading it. But I think I understand the idea, as j9fd3s had explained to me once before.



I realized this idea when drilling out the butterfly screws in my throttle body. My large black & decker drill couldn't drill the screws out, even after killing 2 batteries. Frustrated, I tried the dremel, even though I knew it didn't have nearly as much power (meaning torque). But it went through those screws like a hot knife through butter! So it had little torque, but it went much much faster than the large drill, so it had greater horsepower. Then I got that dim lightbulb over my head.