ok simple question to be answered
 

I tried to explain to this ricer kid at work about torque and horsepower he dont get it.
he is stuck in his idea that horsepower gets a car moving and is the sole force required?
I tried to explain as simple as possible til I was blue in the face but I gave up.
ok anyway to explain these two forces in real easy terms and the relation between the two ?
(gotta keep it simple so a ricer can understand)

ok here is the way i have explained it to people in the past.....

tell him to think about the feeling you get when his car excelerates from a dead stop or in 1st gear ( low gear) and the "PUSHING YOU BACK IN THE SEAT" feeling you get.....tell him at whatever point he feels this feeling to be the greatest is more then likley the highest ( strongest point) of his cars TQ curve...
now tell him as he shifts into 2nd,then 3rd and 4th,,,possibly 5th and 6th gear...the "PRESSING YOU BACK IN THE SEAT" feeling gets less and less..but the car gets faster and faster..this is where the HP Curve starts rising and the TQ curve falls to its lowest...



this is the simplist way i know of explaining it to someone that truly dosen't understand the difference.....


now get him to imgaine..what his rice burner would feel like if he could KEEP THE SAME "PRESSING YOU BACK IN THE SEAT FEELING" he experiences in low gear...while he is in the highest gear he has and the highest MPH..

This is called 632 bbc on a 300 shot....lol

if he doesn't understand this..he needs a moped.

i betcha he doesn't understand why a car running 6.80et at 102 mph outruns a car that turns a 7.00et at 109 mph......

all they see is MPH.....

Brian

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w...pphpfPl3dk.jpg

Explain it that way.

The way I learned it early on was this: Torque is what the engine makes.........turns the driveshaft. HP is a mathmatical calculation, measuring the amount of work the engine can do over a specified period of time.........More HP, the faster the engine can work over that time. I might be wrong, but if I remember correctly, 1 HP=33,000 lbs lifted one foot over a period of one minute................

Another way to look at it is 1000 lbs torque @ 500 rpm is only 95 H.P. that 1000 lbs will stand your car straight up when you release the trans brake but the 95 H.P. wont get it down the track at a very fast rate.Bill

i know this sounds lame but my grand dad told me when i was first
getting into mechanics, its like a fire cracker, the amount of gun
powder (horse pwr) in the expolsive, determines the size of
hole it makes in the ground (torque) and if you ever had a fire cracker
from mexico, theirs are smaller but can take off your hand, more
torque, less gun powder to make the hole (their dangerous)
but gear heads understand and can see how torque is the power
to lift and lanch a car, like the hole the fire cracker makes, if it
sounds dumb, i tried, but i understand the mathamatics of torque
from horse pwr.-my 2 cents :?

If the kids a real smart ass, tell him HP is how fast your fist will smash his face but TQ is how much its gonna hurt.

-torque wins street races (1-2nd gear, top out at the speed limit)
-horsepower wins 1/4 mile races (1-2-3-4+ gear at over 100mph)

challenge him to a street race to show him the differance :lol:

this is pretty vague but look at the big picture, a 200hp/400ft-lb car will beat a car with 400hp/200ft-lbs getting to 50mph but anything after that the hp dominates.

lmao thats one way to get it across.

damn he is hopeless he still turns his ideas around on the subject.
even after I let him read the post above lol.
I guess watching too much fast and furious will do that to ya.
Im gonna give up and let him make an ass of himself.
Well its already happening at work his so called 518 HP volkswagon GTI sounds like a popcorn machine with the tiny turbo and blow off valve.
and he cant tell me the torque the engine puts out and he says torque is irrelevent lol.