rev up your engines, today I'm gonna explain the difference between
horsepower and torque in a modern-day engine, now to begin with a modern engine
creates energy by gasoline burning inside the cylinder and the Pistons
moving down pushing power, internal combustion engines change potential
energy of gasoline into kinetic energy of motion, because you want to move the
tires to get going, now there's all kinds of formulas for that but really I'm a
mechanic you're driving your car here's what you need to know, torque is the
rotating force that an engine creates, now as such torque is a good measurement
of the turning power that an engine has, so if you have an engine that has a lot
of torque, it can accelerate quickly because it's got a lot of turning power
that's what made harley-davidson motorcycles popular they got a v-twin
engine that doesn't have that much horsepower
some of them only put out 50 60 horsepower a few years ago, but they have
a lot of pound foot of torque, so they can accelerate really fast, any engine
that has a lot of torque has a lot of acceleration for taking off, now these
are internal combustion engines I'm talking about, and they need to get to a
certain rpm to get full torque out, unlike let's say an electric motor that
has instant full torque all the time as soon as you turn it on, so on electric
motor has instant full torque that's why the fastest Tesla, it's faster in a
quarter mile then a Dodge Hellcat engine is, because it's an electric motor and
their torque is there, the charger has to rev up pretty fast before the hellcat
engine gets going, where the electric motor you turn the switch on
and boom away it goes, but if you want pure speed then we're talking about
horsepower rating, now horsepower is also a measurement, it's a better measure of
how fast an engine can go, to go back to the Harley Davidson analogy, if you
take a modern 1200 cc Harley, it has 71 horsepower but it has 75 pound feet of
torque, and that particular engine it struggles to go over a hundred miles an hour
pretty much 100 miles an hour is as fast as you want to take it, but you take a 1200 cc
Suzuki Hayabusa engine, that thing is another story, it's not a v-twin engine
with big torque, it's a straight 4-cylinder engine that has a whole bunch
of horsepower instead, it has a hundred and fifty six horsepower, not as much
torque compared to the horsepower, it only has 95 pound foot of torque, so the
ratio is a lot lower than harley-davidson, harley-davidson actually
had more torque than it did horsepower, the Hayabusa has tons more horsepower
than it has torque, with that extra horsepower instead of torque, the
Hayabusa can go over 200 miles an hour, the older ones did, I'm using the older
one then they started to modify them and put limiters on them so they can't go
too fast for some governments made laws you can't have a motorcycle to go 200
miles an hour, but all that extra horsepower let's it go a lot faster, and if
you really want to go insane with speed and horsepower, take a Formula One
race car, there's one out there that puts out 792 horsepower, but only 260
pound foot of torque, quite a difference between that, but they
want horsepower because they want speed, they don't accelerate all that well, but
they have a lot of horsepower if they start from scratch they start slow
because they don't have the torque, but they got the horsepower, once they get
spinning they got speed and they want to keep that speed up
so if you want to relate this to everyday life, you want to understand what kind of
torque and horsepower you want in the vehicle you're gonna drive, let's say
you're gonna tow a bunch of stuff, well then you want a heavy torque engine
diesel engines put out good torque and that's why you see a lot of diesels used
for pulling things, towing things, snow plowing, they've got the torque to push
stuff around and pull stuff, and let's say you want to get a motorcycle and you're
the type of guy who likes doing burnouts and taking off real fast, you
might get a v-twin like a harley-davidson, but if you really want
speed on a motorcycle, hey you're gonna go Japanese multi cylinders, high rpm and
insane horsepower, and conversely if you want a car that gets good gas mileage and
just like driving around, you get a straight 4-cylinder engine, it will get good
gas mileage, modern engines put out enough horsepower, it's not like the
olden days when a little bitty 4-cylinder put out 50 horsepower, yeah
they even make four-cylinder engines and now they put over 300 horsepower, but if
you're the type of person who likes heavier acceleration
you'd probably be better getting a V configuration engine, like a v6 or a v8
it's got more torque, it's gonna take off quicker, so now you know the difference
between horsepower and torque, and what it means for your driving, so if you
never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that
Bell!