Where is the power coming from?

Q: Where is the power coming from?

A: More power sells cars, they want to sell cars, so they try to make more power.

In reply to Kenny_Mccormick

So the cars that ford and gm sold in Europe don't count? The cars were available just not brought.

Japan didn't invent small efficient cars, they brought quality ideas to the cars, making them less of a compromise.

Old cars: Carburetor with fixed jet, 7/8 compression, redline at 4K rpm, linear ignition timing. New cars: FI with variable fuel supply, 11 tp1 compression, variable ignition timing. red line at 7k.

One of the things is, allowing the engine to breath at higher rpms. Lots of work on cams.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to Kenny_Mccormick So the cars that ford and gm sold in Europe don't count? The cars were available just not brought. Japan didn't invent small efficient cars, they brought quality ideas to the cars, making them less of a compromise.

GM and Ford have always brought their European cars to the US. They tend to get bastardized in the process, though. Evan's got his Opel Manta. Remember the Chevette? The original Cavalier? The original (US) Escort? All European. I think the Saturn S-series was the only modern "small car" designed in the US.

I mean, there's also the Contour, and every other US-model Escort, and pretty much anything Ford made in the last ten-twelve years that wasn't a truck or a Mustang. GM also brought a whole lot of Opel over here and rebadged it as Chevy and Buick and Caddy, again the only things that aren't Euro are the fullsizes and the Corvette and the trucks. Ford doesn't even have that, their current fullsize is a Volvo S80.

There really isn't any such thing as a "domestic" car anymore, everything has chassis designed on that continent and engines over here and electronics over there and it's all manufactured or assembled wherever it makes the most sense. Hell, I drive a Swedish car that was built on a Japanese chassis with German electronics, thrown together in the Netherlands...

iceracer wrote: Old cars: Carburetor with fixed jet, 7/8 compression, redline at 4K rpm, linear ignition timing. New cars: FI with variable fuel supply, 11 tp1 compression, variable ignition timing. red line at 7k. One of the things is, allowing the engine to breath at higher rpms. Lots of work on cams.

Maybe 11:1 on a turbo engine

The cams are actually pretty mild. The heads, however, flow astronomically well compared to older engines. Because they can make whatever shape intake manifold they want out of plastic resin, they can put the ports wherever they want and not have to worry so much, so the heads that you see on an econobox today would make a top-level racer of even twenty years ago pee their pants.

alfadriver wrote: In reply to Kenny_Mccormick So the cars that ford and gm sold in Europe don't count? The cars were available just not brought. Japan didn't invent small efficient cars, they brought quality ideas to the cars, making them less of a compromise.

What Knurled said, the big three really dropped the ball there.

So you guys are saying it's NOT vortex throttle body spacers?

ebonyandivory wrote: So you guys are saying it's NOT vortex throttle body spacers?

Funnily enough, I remember reading somewhere recently about a SAE paper on vortex generators on the inlet of a turbo, with the effect of reducing transient spool by something like 26%. One of the first comments was "So the Vornado guys were right?"

In reply to Knurled:

That's the name! Couldn't think of that thing!

I think that fast & cheap computing power both in the cars and usein development work is key. Things like cylinder pressure measurement, hardware-in-the-loop engine tuning, and the ability to accurately simulate engine designs before a single physical part is created. Things like this are a boon to this and many other industries.

Better computers is near the top of the list. Much better control of fuel and timing. Not just in newer cars. Older cars are making more power than ever with old engines run by new control systems. Pick your favorite '90's engine, and see what the aftermarket got out of them 20 years ago. Then check to see what that engine is making today.

Knurled wrote: The cams are actually pretty mild. The heads, however, flow astronomically well compared to older engines. Because they can make whatever shape intake manifold they want out of plastic resin, they can put the ports wherever they want and not have to worry so much, so the heads that you see on an econobox today would make a top-level racer of even twenty years ago pee their pants.

Correct. Most of it is in the cylinder head.

In reply to Kenny_McCormic:

He said that I was wrong and that a few euro cars came. But not many. How does that mean that the Japanese started all of the development.

Yes, the big 3 dropped the ball.

In the end, a huge amount of the change was required to meet the emission rules. Which were also used too make more and more power.

In reply to alfadriver:

The Japanese started a competitive market for small cars in the USA. You don't think the first CAFE targets would have ended up lower if nobody could make a car worth a E36 M3 back then that got 30 mpg? Without proof it could be done, from a country that was a smoking pile of dirt in the ocean 30 years prior at that, imagine how much more effectively the big 3 could have fought to stifle the regulations that forced them to catch up.

fidelity101 wrote:

Knurled wrote:

lnlogauge wrote: It seems in the past few years, there have been more innovations with motors than ever before. 15 years ago 60 grand would have gotten you what, 350hp out of a Mustang Cobra? Today you can get 600hp for the same price. Gas mileage is the same thing. Engineers have figured out ways to get crazy numbers out of a gallon of gas. What has changed to allow what we are seeing today?

Oh, the high power engines will still drain a fuel tank with alarming speed. C&Ds blurb on the Hellcat said that at full chat it drinks a pint of fuel in seven seconds. I think what we are seeing are the benefits of drive by wire and variable cam timing to allow good drivability characteristics (no jumpy tip-in or saggy throttle response) along with better materials to allow for such power numbers, better cooling system engineering, and larger cars that can actually use that kind of power. They have always been able to make the power, the hard part is taming it so Joe Commondoofus can drive it and making it live through the warranty period. Note that drivability standards are really important to an OEM. Ford left a lot of power on the table in the 60s because of some of their requirements, like cold-start and pulling away from idle. Chrysler, meanwhile, started using manual chokes again to limp certain hi-po cars past emissions test standards, and some of their as-stock engines idled like a drum solo and were expressly sold with no warranty because you were probably going to blow it up within a couple months.

I still haven't found a drive by wire that isn't laggy.

That's a tuning choice by the manufacturer in most cases, not a basic trait of the system. My Mustang had something like a full 2 second lag in the throttle response when new and stock. Made rev-match downshifts nearly impossible. It's an '05 GT, one of the first nonmechanical throttles. Supposedly this was done to save the drivetrain from people not used to power. After a simple canned tune the response is lightning quick. Almost telepathic. Enough so that every stock mustang driver that's been in the car has commented on it.

It's only laggy if someone wants it to be.

Look at the SBC, a little over 20 years ago an LT1 was top dog in the OEM SBC world.

LT1 (Gen 2) head flow about 200 cfm on the intake side, and the new Lt1 (gen 5) flow like 325 cfm.

They find a few hp here and afew hp there and sometimes a bunch of hp in a certain component, and it all adds up over the years.

In reply to Opti:

Also look at the piss poor port matching you'd often see on a production V motor in the LT1's time, and how much better that's gotten. I remember being shocked by how far off the LIM on my short lived 3800 S2 was, like 1/8" out of whack on some ports.

In reply to Kenny_McCormic:

So, add better tolerances in casting and machining to the fray.

On the other hand, the series II was, what, 200hp of smooth power delivery in a physically small package, and it was considered to be pretty durn good back then. So good enough really was good enough.

In reply to Knurled:

What I meant by that was while a Gen II SBC head flows 200CFM on the intake side, on a flow bench, it was probably doing worse on the engine with how bad the intake castings often were. Now they're all injection molded fiber filled nylon right up to the head and probably line up a lot better.

Maybe, maybe not. Port mismatch can be a benefit or maybe just make no difference on a running engine. (Is the mismatch in a dead spot, or is the choke point of the system so far away from the mismatch that it doesn't matter?)

Careful to note that the LT1s were still based around an architecture that was designed to seriously pinch the intake down so a reasonably small carburetor manifold could fit under a car's hood. Engines ground-up designed around EFI don't have to be compromised in order to package all that mess. I haven't seen the new LT1 but the LS engines have much shallower valve angles and the ports are much more vertical. And then you get into things like the Mod motors where the intake ports are straight up and down, or the new-Hemi where the camshaft sits up so high the lifters are practically horizontal.

0W-20 oil. That's where it's coming from.

What about the advancements in fuel. Gas today is not necessarily better but it is cleaner and much more consistent quality around the world. Has this allowed manufacturer's to design better cars that can take advantage of this instead of having to design cars for the worst possible fuel quality?

Running cars leaner for better gas milage, and being able to moniter how lean a given engine runs (A/F sensor) being ab le to change the valve timing, lift, and duration also play a huge role in it. all those sensors and gadgets help the ECU time EXACTLY when to inject the fuel and EXACTLY when to fire the spark plug and how much fuel to spray given a certian load and RPM , thus creating a perfect balance of power and economy