BHP sells cars torque wins races

[lanxter]

just thought id put up a little something i read in a magazine to see what your thoughts are.

This was a quote from the famous carol shelby in the 1960's, and now is usually used by diesel owners as a way to make their car sound faster than it really is.
Torque is nice, makes for a more fun car to drive, and makes it easier to drive fast, but BHP is still the ultimate performance tool. If the myth where true, low torque cars like type-r's and F1 racers wouldnt be fast.

Lack of torque overall means you need a lot more effort and closely spaced gears to keep the cars performance on the boil. But providing that possible,"BHP wins races,torque just makes it easier"

now ive spoke to alot of people alot more clever than me, who drive home built cars that are very quick and nearly all of them say BHP is where its at, so why do people rant on about torque??

i mean i know lads with 300ft/lb of torque dervs and i leave them for dead and i know for sure i aint pushing 300ft/lb of torque.

 

[Adam_Glanza]

you need both really, theres no point having lots of one and non of the other or you wont be getting nowhere lol

 

[dac69er]

you are kinda correct. but as adam said, you need a decent combination of the two unless you want a completely race orienated car that unless driven on the limit all the time will not perform. also if you have less weight you would need less torque.

where diesels usually win is when you dont need to drop down a gear to get decent acceleration, they also have quite small power bands generally so you feel a good surge of power before you need to change gear

 

[www.glanza.co.uk]

BHP just helps get you in front, a good torque spread is what gets you out of the corners ahead of the competition...

 

[goldenvtr]

As above really:
i had a chat with some other people that where on the track yesterday and on one perticular corner they were droping into 2nd gear and holding high revs but i want staying in 3rd gear as i have more torque i didnt loose any accelaration and less time spent changing gears. i was coming out the corner at 3500 rpm where as the person in 2nd would of been at about 6000rpm. basically meaning as soon as there out the corner they need to change gear where as i could just accelarate saving time.

i done think that theory "torque wins races" was in mind for straight line, i personally think it came from track racing. as you need less gear changing. theres more to it that that but i can vouch for this from experance now

 

[Texx]

As above really:
i had a chat with some other people that where on the track yesterday and on one perticular corner they were droping into 2nd gear and holding high revs but i want staying in 3rd gear as i have more torque i didnt loose any accelaration and less time spent changing gears. i was coming out the corner at 3500 rpm where as the person in 2nd would of been at about 6000rpm. basically meaning as soon as there out the corner they need to change gear where as i could just accelarate saving time.

i done think that theory "torque wins races" was in mind for straight line, i personally think it came from track racing. as you need less gear changing. theres more to it that that but i can vouch for this from experance now

That little black chocolate wrapper of yours was absolutely flying round Folly yesterday mate, very impressed. Good effort!

 

[goldenvtr]

cheers dude and nice1 for the pics and vid!

 

[GTti]

The Honda cars around castle coombe were revving their tits off keeping up with the competition. But as said above, a good torque spread over the range can really help you in almost all situations - you can pull yourself through the corner and accelerate out quickly - you have useable performance without having to alter the gear.

I should imagine you could be in third and in your power band where as the vtec would need to be in second and change on exit.

Smoother driving is always better.

Dan, what max speed where you reaching on the straights? And what speed up the hill before you brake? It looks like a very deceptive circuit from a spectators point of view. Fast circuit to go on though.

 

[goldenvtr]

my spedo only does upto 115 and i was over that down the main straght, i was coming to the end of 4rth gear up to the pitlane curve about (110mph), i was baking off that little bit so i wouldnt have to change into 5th before that corner. its hard to say as i was watching for braking points more than the speedo lol my gps had a top speed recorded of 134 from yesterday so i imagine about that on the long straight before where simon novice crashed.

and as for deception deffinaltly! i had no ideai would be taking a corner at 110mph but its such an adrenaline rush when you keep feeling the grip

 

[GTti]

I was right in front of the tyre wall where that bloke crashed, some guy got it on video as well. He ran out trying to pull his arch out of his tyre and get his bonnet to stay down, quite funny.

I think 134 is 14mph faster than my GTti's top speed I spent all day wondering how competative my car could be. Oh well next event!

 

[goldenvtr]

come and do silverstone with us!

 

[GTti]

I am!

The Daihatsu crowd is too small to organize anything like this. We had 7 GTti's at castle coombe, a TRxx and a few Copens. (Biggest turn out in years ). So it's a pleasure to come with you guys on some of these things.

 

[goldenvtr]

good stuff dude, i didnt walk over that way where i saw you coming out from but i saw a yellow gtti with 300 written on it.

 

[Gee]

If you have little torque you can still use it effectively through gear ratios. I went in an Integra which had some aftermarket shorter ratio's and it was fast I'm telling ya. No good for motorway cruising thou!

Obvisously however, the more torque the better!

 

[GTti]

I agree the ratios are what does the trick. I've a mixture of torque and power which is quite good - the GTti's are geared very short, which is mostly what makes them quick through the gears. Also have the one with the hybrid now and I'm not sure what is faster or what I prefer.

I sit at 4000RPM at 70 in 5th on the Motorway!

 

[Timmy]

What you really want is a fairly wide powerband and torque at the wheels. This is achieved through gearing. Look at dyno results at the wheels and you really see what is going on.
Basicaly what makes a quick car is lots of power however it delivers it through matched gear ratios.
This may explain why the levin 6speed gear box doesn't have many advantages on a 4efte.

 

[gv1.3]

you see this in action on diesels.

I had a company car that had a 5 speed box and this was then replaced with a similarly powered car with a 6 speed box.

The gearing was so much better with the 6 speed box. In traffic on the 5 speed it went too slow for just moving along in 1st and 2nd made it go too fast so you were constantly changing between the two. The powerband in all of the gears was wayyy too short and meant that if overtaking on the motorway you had to downshift to 4th but halfway through over taking would run out of acceleration and have to upshift to 5th.

The 6 speed box was great as 2nd gear just moved along really nicely in traffic without labouring if you went too slow. On the motorway 6th gear was fine for crusing from 60mph onwards and still had a small amount of pull at all times but if you dropped into 5th it would pull all the way to the top speed of the car and so it was fine for overtaking because it was just like 6th (speed wise) but had more grunt.

Ive been driving my mothers Mitsi outlander and it is the same... for the power that the engine actually makes the gearing is so spot on it really feels much faster.

I guess the ultimate scenario is torque+BHP+gearing

 

[Dan3SGTE]

yeah a bit of all is very nice..... I am a big fan of some nice long gears with good torque to pull through quickly as appose to shorter ratios with to compensate for the lack of torque.

Its nice to not have to resort to dropping gears on overtaking.

 

[Monkfish]

It's a bit of everything really. Torque + Bhp vs weight and gear ratio's.

Take "The Bitch" for example, she has 179.2bhp @ 6,200rpm and 152lbs.ft @ 5000rpm, a power curve flatter than a witches tit and stock gearing in a slightly-under-stock-weight wrapper.

What does that translate to? 211bhp/tonne, 176lbs.ft/tonne, max power at the top of one gear and max torque once I've changed up to the next (Except 4th to 5th, as 5th isn't much longer than 4th). She's easily driveable in town, but really comes into her own above 4000rpm and pulls through to 6500rpm.

Honda's, although generally torque-less rev-boxes, work well because their gearing is suited to the engine type. The k20 (2.0l VTEC as seen in the EP3 CTR) revs to 8000rpm in standard form, making the most of the 6 speed's relatively short gear ratio's. Torque isn't fantastic on them (146lbs.ft iirc) but if you keep them revving and stay in the VTEC range, they're surprisingly quick.

Dervs and lazy American V8 engines rely more on massive torque to get them going, mainly because they don't rev high (5000rpm for dervs and around 6000rpm for V8's), so the gear ratio's are longer to compensate.

:homer:

 

[AdDaMan]

there was a very good article about this in either banzai or jpm and it explained it perfectly. Torque helps to sell diesel cars alot of it is down to the gearbox.