I had a thought, which is somewhat unusual for me, but now and then, one of note drifts by that catches my attention enough to mull it over for a few minutes.
People, especially men, want horsepower in their motor vehicles and every TV car commercial stresses the horsepower. * That new V-4 gives the New 1999 Zither a full 50 horse power … .* Buy the new Remo SUV, whose V-28 engine produces a full 6,000 horse power, which is just what you need for those steep hills in the rain!!.
Okay. Personal thought here. Horses were/are big. Major muscles and power. They can pull major loads and more horses equal more major power and strength, but something like 100 horse power, meaning 100 horses with 400 legs all pulling together, their strength depends on the something like the 6 to 8 inches of dirt each hoof pushes on, equaling something like 24 to 32 square inches of traction with equals 2400 to 3200 square inches of traction for 100 horses
Hooves, unlike tires, dig wedge-like into the ground.
An average SUV using average wide tires might rest on 4 8x6 friction points, maybe a little more, and have 400 horsepower. Now, follow my ramblings here a little further, but is it not obvious that, for the average car, truck or SUV, the amount of horsepower verses usable surface traction is going to narrow down to something like 4 to 6 horses before breaking free of the surface?
Yeah, tires generate greater hold than horses hooves, but only on good pavement. In sand, horses hooves are superior. Yeah, most vehicles weigh more than horses, but that would only increase the traction point by perhaps one horse taking into the consideration the ‘increasing traction points’ as a tire flattens and exposes more tread surface to pavement.
No matter how you cut it, though, a vehicle only has the available foot traction of 4 to 6 horses before the wheels break free, and perhaps 8 to 10 with 4 wheel drive. After the wheels skid on any surface, horsepower is moot. You can have 400 horsepower and waste 250 of it spinning the wheels, kind of like dragsters do. (Then again, if a dragster could use all of it’s horsepower on the friction points and not break free upon acceleration, the driver would reach the end of the run as something close to pulp in his drag suit. He’d leak out of the car.)
So, why do we need 350 to 450 horsepower in a vehicle that will break traction at the power of 6 to 8? (No, I’m not including specialized, heavy load vehicles like tractor trailers with 10 to 16 specialized wheels.)
I looked at the European average cars which have small engines and use gears to get them up to speed and probably churn out 150 horse power but can get up to almost 200 mph in certain types. Then I look back at the big, V-6 and V-8, gas guzzlers in the States, churning out 400 horsepower on only able to actually use maybe 150 to 200 of it.
So, why do we need major horsepower in our vehicles when we can only use half or less of that power due to physics?
In most cars with 400 horsepower, you’d have to jack them up, take the wheels off, fasten them to braces well sunk into the earth and tie cables to the drive wheels and use it like a wench in order to use all of the horse power.
ONLY ON 4X4s because these figures change dramatically when you go to normal drive cars, which have only 1 actual driving wheel or variable traction, so that cuts the actual friction point used to pull with down by 3/4s of the initial surface. With positive traction, cut it by 1/2.
So, basically in a regular variable traction, front wheel drive car, with 350 horsepower engine, you’re using only the actual friction power of 1 maybe 2 horses. The other 348 are unused or only cut in maybe 50 more to help push your traveling speed up more rapidly. That leaves around 290 horsepower just consuming gas.
Well, waddaya think?
