Intake manifold modifications

[vex]

Originally Posted by drewski86

This is starting to make sense. For some reason, ever since I was a kid I looked at x amount of horsepower meaning x amount of horses available to work and more horses can obviously pull something faster. I wasn't taught this, it's just how it made sense to me as a kid.

An easy way to think about it is this. It takes Horsepower to accelerate a car to a specific speed. Depending on where you are in the RPM band you are applying a certain amount of torque at that instant to the ground.

If you've taken a dynamics class in college or have yet to (I highly recommend it, it's one of the most confusing, hard, and most rewarding I have taken thus far) you will learn that to accelerate a car from 0-60mph in a certain amount of time takes some amount of horsepower. Maintaining 60mph takes significantly less hp. Accelerating above 60mph takes much much more than it did to go to 60.

That's more however due to wind resistance then overpowers rolling resistance. But just something to remember.


Torque is only good if the object doesn't move. IE: The wheel applies 90ft-lbs of torque at some point in time. Proceed a little further in time and you may be applying 200ft-lbs.

For this reason dyno's are able to calculate both at the same time since they're both relative and related to each other as previously attested.

If you'd like I could write up a little dynamics example about a car if it will better illustrate the point.