So which is best. BHP's or torques....?

[Keith@APR]

and there's so much of it in the US of A in respect of power claims when you read good ole vortex

Oh no doubt. I would agree wholeheartedly. I don't like that APR is included in this thought process though. We've been arguing this since we were founded.

To date we are still the only US tuner to use uncorrected dyno numbers with normalized data that is an average of multiple runs throwing out the highest.

 

[Keith@APR]

All the yanks do now is run everything on e85 or meth injection and put them on dynojets/dynapack to get over inflated figures.

I've not bothered too read all the posts ,but seeing as holding torque high in the revs means more power it's a pointless question!

That's the current trend over here with the lesser tuners, yes. They are trying to make more power without addressing the true knock limitations of the engine by spraying meth or using e85 which they typically conveniently leave out when selling their wares to customers.

 

[lesinge2k]

torque is best as torque gives you the acceleration...

you have to declare bhp to insurance companies so a map that gives loads of torque but minimal bhp increase would be good for keeping insurance cheap

 

[Slimy]

I'm also a fan of torque, I'd much prefer 200lbft of torque available from 500 to 6000, than 200BHP available from 5000-6000. A Honda engine just seems totally wrong to me. But my boss raves about his Type R, so it really is personal preference.

You could look to motorsport to see what is the best, and a brief glimpse at many types of racing shows that diesels are taking over. I'm fairly sure that every discipline that has seen a diesel introduced has seen that same car win. I reckon it's only a matter of time before F1 sees it's first diesel car...

 

[jonathanp]

Thing is the second you talk about torque and rpm in the same sentance you might as well be talking about BHP.

Torque on its own isn't any good, you could have 500lb/ft at 2000rpm being its peak bhp but it wouldn't make a fast car unless you could have 20 odd gears in an autobox with lightning fast changes. Even then its only a 190bhp car.

Depends on style of driving if you drive you car at its quickest you want good torque at high rpm's or you want a little less torque but really high rpm's.

If you want lazy driving so you can keep it in any gear and still have good acceleration then its high torque at low rpm but even then other cars will be quicker with less torque as they can drop down a few gears to a different rpm where they have more power.


I agree diesel will probably be the way forward, as a fuel I think it contains more energy or is more efficient. Twin turbo's seem the perfect compromise high torque at low rpm and still pretty good torque towards the red line.

e.g. BMW 3 litre twin turbo diesel, 428lbft at 1750 - 140odd bhp and 341lb/ft at 4400 rpm - 286bhp