Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2005 9:55 pm
"Hooray for poor gas mileage. Just get a sports compact and tune it Can be faster then a muscle car and still better on gas!"
Look into the Chevy 6.0L LS2 engine. Capable of 28 highway, makes 400hp and 400lb/ft of torque. The problem with the tuner market is that most people that tune up a rice car tend to compare an engine they've spend tons of money on to a bone stock V8 that rolled off a factory line. If you were to put the same amount of effort into a V8 engine, you'd make more power, nearly proportionally, maybe even more so since V8 performance parts are cheaper. I just don't see the point in spending that much green to get a high revving, torqueless 300hp on a dyno. People get too tied into horsepower figures and don't realize that it is meaningless without torque. There are two ways to increase horsepower, by increasing torque, or increasing RPM. Increasing RPM does nothing for the power of the motor, 500lb ft of torque at 2,000 RPM is the same as 500 lb ft at 5,000 RPM. The main benefit of running higher RPMs is that you can use a lower gear ratio, thus getting a higher torque multiplication ratio while running the same speed. 4 cylinders naturally lack torque due to less displacement, so you're not multiplying as much to begin with. Running higher RPMs decreases both fuel mileage and reliability. That's why the typical Japanese 4 cylinder of today tends to fail religiously at around 200,000 miles, some cases get more than that, but it's more rare. Honda and Toyota weren't the first manufacturers to produce a reliable engine. I've owned Toyotas, and I've turned a few too many wrenches on Hondas of my g/f's to buy into the typical hoopla about them being the most reliable vehicles on earth. They're all made by men, all cars of today lack the quality that you'd get 30-40 years ago, though. Notice you don't see as many cars from the 90s rolling around these days, they're out there, but it's not as prolific as seeing the 60-80s cars you'll see roll by every day, in whatever condition they may be in. My 350 Chevy had over 350,000 when I rebuilt it, and it was still in good working order besides the rings being worn down, as any engine with that many miles will do. As far as power, I wish the standard was to list average torque or average horsepower over a set RPM range instead of letting manufacturers and builders have a field day with meaningless peak HP figures. The main drawback of musclecars is lack of sufficient gearing for acceleration. There wasn't overdrive back then, so you'd typically get a granny gear in the rear axle just so you could run at a decent RPM on the interstate. The other drawback is that they need to be tuned better. Fuels back then were leaded and were a lot more volatile than the fuels of today, plus factory carbs of the day weren't necessarily optimum for the engine. Head work such as hardened valve seats and a port job help a lot as well. Transmissions are easily changed since most newer V8s still had the same size block and bellhousing that the older V8s had. Carbs are easy to tune and change as well. Old 60s fastbacks make excellent vehicles for acoustics. Both could easily be done cheaper than it would cost to beef up a 4 cylinder, and would equal better performance and much improved gas mileage compared to it's stock form. I've had no problems getting plenty of power and 20+mpg highway in my vehicles if I designed the powertrain to do so, it just takes some tuning and matching parts correctly.
Look into the Chevy 6.0L LS2 engine. Capable of 28 highway, makes 400hp and 400lb/ft of torque. The problem with the tuner market is that most people that tune up a rice car tend to compare an engine they've spend tons of money on to a bone stock V8 that rolled off a factory line. If you were to put the same amount of effort into a V8 engine, you'd make more power, nearly proportionally, maybe even more so since V8 performance parts are cheaper. I just don't see the point in spending that much green to get a high revving, torqueless 300hp on a dyno. People get too tied into horsepower figures and don't realize that it is meaningless without torque. There are two ways to increase horsepower, by increasing torque, or increasing RPM. Increasing RPM does nothing for the power of the motor, 500lb ft of torque at 2,000 RPM is the same as 500 lb ft at 5,000 RPM. The main benefit of running higher RPMs is that you can use a lower gear ratio, thus getting a higher torque multiplication ratio while running the same speed. 4 cylinders naturally lack torque due to less displacement, so you're not multiplying as much to begin with. Running higher RPMs decreases both fuel mileage and reliability. That's why the typical Japanese 4 cylinder of today tends to fail religiously at around 200,000 miles, some cases get more than that, but it's more rare. Honda and Toyota weren't the first manufacturers to produce a reliable engine. I've owned Toyotas, and I've turned a few too many wrenches on Hondas of my g/f's to buy into the typical hoopla about them being the most reliable vehicles on earth. They're all made by men, all cars of today lack the quality that you'd get 30-40 years ago, though. Notice you don't see as many cars from the 90s rolling around these days, they're out there, but it's not as prolific as seeing the 60-80s cars you'll see roll by every day, in whatever condition they may be in. My 350 Chevy had over 350,000 when I rebuilt it, and it was still in good working order besides the rings being worn down, as any engine with that many miles will do. As far as power, I wish the standard was to list average torque or average horsepower over a set RPM range instead of letting manufacturers and builders have a field day with meaningless peak HP figures. The main drawback of musclecars is lack of sufficient gearing for acceleration. There wasn't overdrive back then, so you'd typically get a granny gear in the rear axle just so you could run at a decent RPM on the interstate. The other drawback is that they need to be tuned better. Fuels back then were leaded and were a lot more volatile than the fuels of today, plus factory carbs of the day weren't necessarily optimum for the engine. Head work such as hardened valve seats and a port job help a lot as well. Transmissions are easily changed since most newer V8s still had the same size block and bellhousing that the older V8s had. Carbs are easy to tune and change as well. Old 60s fastbacks make excellent vehicles for acoustics. Both could easily be done cheaper than it would cost to beef up a 4 cylinder, and would equal better performance and much improved gas mileage compared to it's stock form. I've had no problems getting plenty of power and 20+mpg highway in my vehicles if I designed the powertrain to do so, it just takes some tuning and matching parts correctly.