Re: Horsepower and Torque - a Primer

["Raymond Vacha" <ray_vacha@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bruce Augenstein writes in part:
<snip> what if we ditched that water wheel, and bolted a 3 liter E36 M3
engine in its place? Now, no 3 liter BMW is going to be making over 2600
foot pounds of torque (except possibly for a single, glorious instant,
running on nitromethane), but, assuming we needed 12 rpm for an input to the
mill, we could run the BMW engine at 6000 rpm (where it's making 210 foot
pounds of torque), and gear it down to a 12  rpm output, using a 500:1 gear
set. Result? We'd have *105,000* foot pounds of torque to play with. We
could probably twist the whole flour mill around the input shaft, if we
needed to :-).

The Only Thing You Really Need to Know

Repeat after me. "It is better to make torque at high rpm than at low rpm,
because you can take advantage of *gearing*." <snip>

I seriously thought this was a great post and I personally learned a lot.  I
have one burning question though.  If I bolted an E39 M5 to the water mill
and geared it down to 1 RPM using an 6000:1 gear set, could I rotate the
*earth* about the rear axle and create some way cool millenium clock?  It
also seems that if the water mill were to be located in SoCal then our
Roundel editor Satch Carlson could experience a real summer without leaving
Alaska!  Just a thought :-)

I've also learned on the UUC digest that a Torsen, even with synthetic lube
and a *really* big finned heatsink probably isn't the best choice in gear
sets....

Ray Vacha
97 E39 540i 6 Speed "ZEIT"
BMW CCA, NMA
Northern Ohio Chapter
mailto:ray_vacha@domain.elided

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