What are they ,why is torque measured in pound feet, and how big is the horse.
Is this a serious question ?
Its serious ,the horse is a joke ,my sense of humour is hit and miss.i’ll rephrase the question.Are both measurements of power,and is a 500 hp and a 500 lb feet car generally better than 500 450 for example.
depend of rpm and curve
depend of rpm and curve
To explain horsepower and torque and get very detailed and very confusing. Some people believe horsepower is everything while others say torque does all the work. I would say just try to get the most out of both. 500 torque is better than 450. The simplest way that i look at this is horsepower is for your speed while torque if for your accel. Yes i know thats not the best answer or even the correct definition but that is a very dumbed down view of it.
If you keep it “simple” yes.
But it depend of the curve.
It also depend of the RPM
450 at 4000 RPM will probably give better result (racing wise) that 500 at 2000.
Yes completely agree and yes i was keeping it very simple. There are many other things to look at on what actually torque is (force vs work) so i was just keeping it simple
I agree, horsepower + torque + curves + reaction + turbo lag time (if it’s turbo) …etc it’s all effect how does the engine produce the power in the real life , In forza hmmm !
Not many people know this but they are completely related. In a vehicle, torque is measured at various engine speeds, or revolutions per minute (RPM). These two numbers are fed into a formula – torque times RPM divided by 5,252 – to arrive at horsepower. So horsepower is like a measure of torque through the rpms.
So 200lb/ft torque at 15000 rpms would be ~ 571 HP (Formula 1 for example). OR 400lb/ft torque at 7500 rpms would be ~ 571 HP (beefy corvette for example). OR 600lb/ft torque at 5000 RPM would be ~ 571 HP (Big block muscle car for example)
It is all tied in. Do some reading about torque curves and you should be optimizing your gearbox in no time

Not many people know this but they are completely related. In a vehicle, torque is measured at various engine speeds, or revolutions per minute (RPM). These two numbers are fed into a formula – torque times RPM divided by 5,252 – to arrive at horsepower. So horsepower is like a measure of torque through the rpms.
So 200lb/ft torque at 15000 rpms would be ~ 571 HP (Formula 1 for example). OR 400lb/ft torque at 7500 rpms would be ~ 571 HP (beefy corvette for example). OR 600lb/ft torque at 5000 RPM would be ~ 571 HP (Big block muscle car for example)
It is all tied in. Do some reading about torque curves and you should be optimizing your gearbox in no time
I was just about to post this. Power is a function of torque and time. One horsepower is equal to 32,572 ft lb / min. Rumor has it the numbers were derived from how much a horse can consistently lift in an effort to relate the power of steam engines to horses, back in the day when steam engines were still new and unproven.
Ft lbs are a measure of the “rotational force” equivalent to if you hung a one pound weight at the end of a one foot long rod. If you held the other end of the rod, the weight would induce a “rotational force” of 1 ft lb. There’s nothing intrinsic as to why it was selected as a unit of torque. It’s quite tangible, though–easy to conceptualize–opposed to the SI unit of Newton meters.