When I talk about power numbers concerning my truck with less educated people(when it comes to cars that is) I always say TQ is what gets you going, HP is what keeps you going. Am I right in saying that?

 

Not really. Think of it this way -- if an engine has monster torque down low, it has monster HP down low, because HP is a function of torque and RPMs. So it is still the HP that both gets you going and keeps you going.

 

When I was on the dyno at REM, and we began tuning, we reached a point that my engine would not produce any more HP no matter what we did (adding fuel and or timing), but the torque wasnt a problem for just kept going up and up....what do you think about this? Paul@REM said this was do to the blowers inefficiency at at that level of 18#s boost and that the air entering the engine was just getting hotter causing this inefficiency.....

 

At all times during the dyno test, your engine was producing HP at the rate of torque x rpm, divided by 5250. So if it was making torque, it was making horsepower. It was making exactly the same HP at any given RPM as any other engine on the planet with the same torque at that RPM.

 

no offense, im just trying to figure this out here, because some of this seems rather odd just on what ive observed.

Lets say i grab a torque wrench and take it to my lug nuts. I torque it to 150 and hold it there. Im not moving, so im producing no hp, but i remain to be producing 150 ft lbs of torque. So is this invalid?

 

I tell peaple that torque is how much work is being done and horsepower is how fast the work is being done.

For instance a big diesel rig can make maybe a couple thousand foot pounds of torque but only 400 or so hp. So it is doing a huge amount of work but relatively slowly. Or an F1 engine is only making a couple hundred foot pounds of torque but at 17,000+ RPM and over 800 hp it is doing a small amount of work (compared to the diesel) at a very high rate of speed.
Dale

PS...I was just plucking numbers out of thin air to make a point....no attacks please

 

http://www.houseofthud.com/cartech/t...horsepower.htm

This does s good job of explaining things IMO