What do you guys think about gaining more torque as opposed to HP?

Everyone looks at HP figures and most people ignore TQ. It took me owning a Conquest to realize this. In most cases on this turbo car, the tq figures jump more on every mod than the HP do! LOL In almost all modded StarQuests, you'll see tq figures equal, if not higher than the HP numbers. A necessity to haul that 3100 lbs around.

Now, since tq is ultimately a factor in HP, why wouldn't you want to shoot for more torque with a particular mod since our cars are basically heavier than most other Hondas?

Just food for thought.

 

Excellent article...
http://www.g-speed.com/pbh/torque-and-hp.html

Andrew

 

I understand that perfectly, I'm just curious as to everyone elses view on this. How they feel this pertains to them and their cars.

 

its hard to do it...with such a small engine

though i wish honda made 2.5 liter 4 bangers that rev to 8k
that would be crazy.

for street driving i'd perfer more torque than hp.
but for drag racing i like having a peak torque at a high RPM
meaning it will never run outta steam.

though Mustangs are fast! but their torque curve dies around 4500rpms
thats why turbocharged hondas will usually catch up to them at the top of 3rd.

What are some mods that will create gobs of torque?
only thing i can think of is to change the stroke and bore...to actually change the nature of the powerband

"hondas are high hp motors"

 

In my opinion it is mostly because of the automotive industry. Everywhere you look companies are advertising their products as adding "X" ammount of HP. If someone just recently jumped on the automotive bandwagon, what do you think their interpretation of "what's faster" is?...the one that has the most HP. In my opinion the word horsepower is thrown around lightly without many people actually knowing what it is, how you get more of it, how it's a biproduct of torque, and how to use it to your advantage. Mostly it's just someone picking up the word not really knowing what it is.
I'm not exactly sure if thats the kind of response you were looking for or not.

P.S. I'm ordering the rest of my parts Thursday! Hell yea

 

Actually, both the last responses were more along the lines of what I was looking for.

I often feel that tq is underrated, and rarely brought up in discussions of power.

 

when i drive my domestic friends, they see 8000k rpms
and their SHOCKED! cause their big ol' V8's go to 6000rpms

they bust on me cause i have an import. They say that you
need to rev the outta them just to get power.

that is why im going turbo now...in order to laugh in their faces run 11's and
still get 25mpg. FORMULA 1 TECHNoLOGy!

i remember back in the day all the F1 cars had over 1000hp than they made alot
of restrictions. Theres only so much a 4 banger can do. AND THATS ALOT~

 

LOL.. yeah, that and they had those oval pistons... hahahaha

 

Hey everyone this is my first time posting in here. I drive a 01 ebp base 5spd lude. I usually post on preludeonline and hondaprelude.com

well on your topic a quote i once heard

Horsepower sells cars, torque wins races

 

isnt horsepower just a measure of torque at a certain rpm?

i believe the equation for hp is (torque x rpm's)/5252 = hp or (torque x rpm's x 2pi)/3000

hrmmmmmmmmmm....

 

Bingo!

A dyno doesn't actually measure horsepower...it measures torque.

They are not mutualy exclusive. You can do things other than making the engine larger (bore and stroke) to make more torque in a given portion of the powerband. Things like the length and diameter of your collector as well as the volume and specifically the dimentions of your intake manifold have direct impact on the torque characteristics of the motor. That's why secondary butterflies are used...variable volume for different rpm ranges. VTEC is similar, and gives you a lot of flexibility in things like camshaft modifications. For example, one of the Crower stage 2 cams has stock grinds on the idle lobes and only changes the VTEC lobe. This is advantagous because almost always if you were to spec out a cam grind to optimize high end power you will lose low end power (torque). Therefore, by only modifying a cam that is engaged at high rpm, you don't lose ANY low end power. The change at the point of engagement is more severe but, hey, we all love that anyway.

The point is HP ~ TQ hasn't everyone noticed that the HP and TQ curves on a dyno chart cross at the same point everytime....mmmmm......

 

..horsepower sells, but torque wins races!

 

looking past the torque vs. hp debate, i think it funny that people make such a big deal over peak horsepower and torque...

i think what matters vastly more is the curve....

think about this...i lined up against many gs-r's this summer in Ocean City... i have a 94 Si non-vtec... makes 160 peak hp at 5500 rpm's... teg makes 10 more hp at 7500rpm i think... I NEVER ONCE LOST TO AN INTEGRA GS-R... why? look at the hp and torque curves... that teg dont make poo poo till it hits vtec at around 5500.. right when im peaking... he cant even start to catch up till he hits vtec.

 

the key is the area under the torque curve for the portion of the powerband you're actually in while racing. if you drop the clutch at 4000rpm and never get below that on an upshift, you certainly don't care how much torque you're making at 3500 or 3000 or 3950rpm.

and given that a transmission is a torque multiplier, what you really want to do is string out the torque curve in a row for each gear for only the RPMs you're actually using when you race, taking into account the relative ratios in each gear. do that for two cars, divide the area under each curve by the weight of the same car, and the bigger number wins.

you'll get something like this... assuming a rolling start and no slippage during shifts (yeah... right!) this was for my 55h gen with a torque peak of 182 lb-ft at around 5200rpm... 162 lb-ft at redline, and 167 lb-ft at 4000rpm. (at the wheels)

 

whats a 55h gen, and where can i get one?

 

typo, 5th gen.