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I apologise for any harshness in my tone, I just got home from a 16 hour day at work and I'm a bit tired. I'm really just over this misconception that big power figures are the be-all and end-all of performance. Balance is where it's at, and a balanced car will ALWAYS beat an unbalanced, high-powered car in any situation except for a long, long straight.
all good man. im sorry if i sounded harsh too. at least its good to talk to someone who knows what theyre talking about.
but first im gonna make some assumpsions. its about an eg vs ek, they are very similar cars, the eg being slightly lighter... so for the sake of argument, we'll say cornering isnt an issue, or that the cars with the engines we're comparing have the same cornering ability. this is why i said in a drag basis, because we're comparing engines, and theres no real use talking about corners when your comparing engines...esp when the two engiens are both FF bseries.
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Originally Posted by
GenesisEG
True, but I think you'll find that in every post I've made on this forum, I've supported N/A cars purely for the fact that generally speaking, their power curve is far more predictable and far more linear than that of boosted cars (I say in general, I know it's possible to achieve a similar result using boost but it's far more expensive).
and i agree. (i havent really seen many of your other posts :p). i personally cant decide between na and boosted. i like the smoothness of na...but at the same time i like the efficiency of a turbo, but i dont like its complexity, so theres alot going for both sides....buut thats not what this is about :p
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Same gearing, he had slightly better traction but not enough to make 4 seconds difference... It was the torque that made the difference.
well tbh to make any serious assesment i think i'd need to see the cars and see the power curves to compare
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I don't think I ever said that one is more important than the other. In fact, I'm quite sure I never said it.
"Torque. Pulling power makes all the difference. B18 and B16 with equal mods, B18 will always win because it produces more torque"
"the engine with more torque wins, hands down."
pretty sure this implies that torque is more important and that power should be second in consideration to torque.
but i should probably add that b18 and b16 with equal mods, b18 would also have more power too...which is actually why it will always win.
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What I did say, was that people pay far too much attention to getting massive power output without considering their torque output. People keep talking about modding 1.6L engines and making them more powerful than 1.8L engines, and that may be so, but there is a reason the 1.8L is better, and that's torque. Assuming the peak power of the engine is the same, the engine with more torque wins, hands down.
but in this scenario people still arent taking the curve into account. because of the extra capacity and torque, the b18 will make power easier down low. you'll probably find that if you compare the power curves, the b18 will actually have more POWER untill the high end where the b16 takes over.
increasing torque is a way to increase your power throughout your rev range, but its not torque your aiming for. its power. torque, especially peak torque really is actually meaningless when you talk about cars acceleration because of the gear box which is effectively a torque multiplier, what you want is power. i'll write more on this later in the post.
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Anyone who has ever raced on a track, or anywhere for that matter, knows that being able to drive at 400kph doesn't mean alot when you're facing corners. The car that launches faster and can handle corners faster, will always come out on top, and I've proven that in practice. My 600hp ute can quite comfortably sit on 330kph (I've done it before), but it gets eaten alive by anything with decent torque and the ability to handle corners.
not to be rude, but cause we're comparing engines, we're not talking about corners :p
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Lower torque at the engine, higher torque at the wheels... I'm confused. Torque is not produced at the wheels, it's the ability of the engine to make the wheels turn under load. More torque means faster acceleration, because the engine can make the wheels turn more easily under load. It doesn't matter if you have a million horsepower, if your torque is low, you will never be able to make the mass of the car move forward.
That's why high powered 4 cylinder cars lose alot of their driving potential when they have 4 people sitting in them, whereas an 8 cylinder engine with much more torque can move that extra mass with relative ease.
yeah torque at the engine, torque at the wheels. if you dont understand that you must not know how gearboxes work. just you never hear torque at the wheels or engine, its just torque. after the power comes out of the engine it has T torque, that goes through a gearbox, which is essentially a torque multiplier, so the resultant torque turning your wheels is completely different to the torque the engine is giving out. i can have 2 engines...they both have 200kw. one has 200Nm of torque and the other has 400Nm of torque...but the first one has a 5.5k redline, and the other has a rediculous 11k redline. its extreme i know, but its to prove a point. if you put a 2:1 reducer on the high revving engine, the two engines will accelerate at exactly the same pace cause your essentially halfing the output speed and doubling the torque, but i couldnt do this if the power wasnt there. THIS is why power is more important with power you can do alot of things. especially when you realise that torque x angular velocity = power. if you use a gearbox to reduce the speed of rotation, you gain torque.
also, torque isnt the ability to move wheels...torque is the rotational force output by the engine. slightly different wording, but its important. cause your engine can be outputting alot of torque but not getting anywhere. also. power is the measure of energy converted per second. the engine producing a higher power at any given time will convert more stored energy in the fuel to rotational energy at the wheels.
also, alot of high powered 4cyl cars suffer with passengars cause theyre light, and a passengar can weigh anything from 60-100kg, which is a shitload in a small coupe
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Having said that, I repeat, I never said that power is unimportant, it's just not as important as people think. In real-life driving, meaning driving on roads with corners and the need to stop and start from time to time, torque becomes a major factor in performance. If you were doing laps around a ring, then it becomes less important and peak power comes into play, since you're moving around in top gear for long periods of time. Lets assume, for the sake of being realistic, that this doesn't happen often...
just for the record, i never said that you said that power was unimportant (tongue twister :p). but your clearly implying that torque is more important then power, which i disagree with. yes, torque is usefull in drivability, but when it comes to straight line, power is where its at.
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As you say, gearing is important, but again, we're not talking so much about gearing as we are about engines. The question was, why use a B18 when a B16 can produce as much, if not more horsepower. The answer is torque. If you modify a B16 and a B18 so that both produce 200hp at the engine, the B18 will always win, always, because it has more torque.
but you always have to consider gearing. the origonal question was how to make an ek beat an egb18. with the b16 you can produce just as much peak power yes...but WHERE is the rest of the power produced? its likely the mods for the b16 would focus on top end power, leaving the bottom end lacking, and i doubt the rev limit of a b16 vs b18 would be enough to use gearing. yes you have to look at torque, but in the end its about power, as torque is only a way to produce power. you'll find looking at the power curves, that any time the b18 is pulling away from the b16 the b18 is producing more power, and at other times, when the b16 is catching up, the b16 will be producing more power, despite producing less torque.
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Which is why I always advise against sticking a turbo on a Civic. The power band is too narrow, and the power curve is too sharp, and it makes for a really difficult time driving on anything but a straight road.
well...IF i were to turbo a b16a it would be a fairly small turbo focusing on response and i wouldnt want any lag past 3k. i wouldnt go crazy with boost.
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True, a car with a million Nm of torque and no power will not move very fast at all, but now you're talking extremes. A car with a million horsepower and no torque will not be able to move off the line to begin with, even if it could travel at the speed of light once it got moving.
i was never talking in those extremes, all i said was its possible for a high power low torque engine to out accelerate a high torque low power engine.
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True, torque is torque and it's hard to increase the torque output of an engine without increasing its capacity, which is why the B18 is superior to the B16, again.
The B18 can produce just as much power as the B16, but on top of that, it produces more torque, which will result in quicker acceleration throughout the entire rev range.
wrong, if you have the power, you can produce more torque through gearing. this is where i said you can play around with power, if you have high torque low power you cant do much with it, but if you have high power low torque you can play around with gearing and have both a high top speed and great acceleration due to gearing. you CANNOT ignore gearing. and its for the same reason that better final drives are so sought after, even though it dosent actually effect the power or torque output of the engine. however you'll find that a better final drive will actually increase the torque transferred to the wheels, while at the same time reducing the speed that that torque is delivered.
sure torque is an easy way to increase the power of an engine, but it essentially comes down to power, not torque.
consider this. the v6 commodore has 305Nm of torque, roughly double the torque of some honda engines....even despite the weight, you would expect this torque to kick hondas ass...but you regularly see hondas leaving the v6's in the dust. if torque was as important as you say the v6 would have a much better chance against the hondas even despite its weight
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I never assume straight drag scenarios, because drag cars are absolutely useless everywhere else. Plus, Civics are a really bad choice for drag cars since they are both underpowered and front wheel drive. In a drag, you want big power, big torque and the wheels being driven by the engine to actually be touching the ground when you accelerate... Rear wheel drive cars press their drive wheels into the ground under acceleration which is why they will always be superior to front wheel drive cars in drags.
if you want to talk about corners you introduce suspension geometry, chassis dynamics and coilovers which is irrelevent to an engine choice. you ALWAYS have to talk about drag when your comparing engines, otherwise your comparing setups, not engines.
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There are some diesels in motorsport, but diesel engines are not as widely used by the general populace at the moment, and the engines themselves are not as highly developed. I think, given time, you will see more diesel engines hit the tracks. It's just going to take time before people start looking for ways to utilise the torque they can produce without sacrificing too much power.
you obviously dont know much about diesels.
1. diesels produce lots of torque, but not much POWER
2. the power band in a diesel is very small.
petrol engines are preferrable because they produce a wider power band, and more power for an equivelant torque. let me put it this way, the higher the rpm that you can produce the torque, the more usefull it is. THIS is what power means
