Horsepower vs. Torque

[QDRHRSE]

I want a piece of that volvo at the Street Races!!!! You know Mike, we could make a couple grand a night easy racing that Volvo in LA....at least until word got out. There are so many places they race in Socal, we could hit a different race night in different towns for at least a couple of weeks.

 

[Michael Yount]

It ain't that quick - there's some serious street racers that would eat me alive; the trick is to get them to give you like 40 lengths. In any event, I raced SCCA for about 8 years and got most of that out of my system. Slow and steady on the street - an occasional rip through 2nd and 3rd on an on-ramp.

 

[Jkstang78]

Here is some more info Torque and Horsepower - A Primer

http://vettenet.org/torquehp.html

You need torque for this

 

[IndyBlk5.0]

so basically think of it this way.
Torque is more important off the line.
HP is more important say going 50+mph

 

[HISSIN50]

so basically think of it this way.
Torque is more important off the line.
HP is more important say going 50+mph

crude generalities are hard to make. that said, i think of it as: torque is the twisting force (ability to spin wheels and accelerate fast), while HP tends to correlate to the ability to breathe at higher RPM's.

like i said, very crude, but along the lines of your statement (we all have different opinions on this stuff - for me it is how i think of it and we all know my brain is weird).

 

[Ray III]

Too much confusion in this thread...

You don't say torque is better for this and horsepower is better for that.

ALL engines develop torque.
ALL engines develop horsepower.

Torque is the twisting force that the crankshaft is actually exerting at any RPM.

Horsepower has to do with how fast the torque is being put out.

It is horsepower that determines how much work an engine is going to be capable of doing, and so that's why engines are rated by peak horsepower output. Because horsepower has the factors of torque and speed, you can increase one and decrease the other. Thus, an engine that makes 300 horsepower at 5,000 RPM has exactly the same torque output as an engine that makes 300 horsepower at 1,000 RPM, after both undergo the necessary gear reduction to acheive the same shaft speed, and if you neglect friction losses from this process.

That's a big IF there. The fact is, drivetrain losses do occur, and the more gear reduction you have the worse it is. That is why the aforesaid Benz can hang with a Ferrari that outpowers it, because at the rear wheels the Benz has the advantage in horsepower losses.

It is always better for an engine to make its power at a low speed, for a few reasons that I won't get into at this point. The reason you see so many people revving their engines sky high to make horsepower is because you don't need to make lots of torque when you can use gear reduction as a crutch. An ideal engine will have high torque production so they don't need to be spun too fast.