Smart Question!!
Donating Maxima.org Member
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,940
It depends what you mean by performanc. There's the figures of elapsed time (ET) and speed through the traps in mph.
I'm 99% sure I read in one of those Hot Rod mags (a while ago - that was a weird period for me
) that the ET is an indication of reaction time and how well the car launches (wheelspin). While the trap speed is an indication of horsepower. Any car, given the same horsepower will run pretty close speeds through the 1/4, and might differ a bit more in the ET depending on launchability. These aren't hard, strict rules but if you look in one of those road test summaries in car mags like Car & Driver, etc you can probably find cars of comparable horsepower running similar 1/4 speeds.
People building to improve their 1/4 mile performance almost always build with "horsepower" in mind, which usually means more top-end performance, sometimes at the expense of bottom-end performance, where torque rules. Torque and horsepower are directly related, but the HowStuffWorks page can probably explain it better than me. (It'll probably also explain why torque peaks are always lower than HP peaks.)
HTH
I'm 99% sure I read in one of those Hot Rod mags (a while ago - that was a weird period for me
) that the ET is an indication of reaction time and how well the car launches (wheelspin). While the trap speed is an indication of horsepower. Any car, given the same horsepower will run pretty close speeds through the 1/4, and might differ a bit more in the ET depending on launchability. These aren't hard, strict rules but if you look in one of those road test summaries in car mags like Car & Driver, etc you can probably find cars of comparable horsepower running similar 1/4 speeds.People building to improve their 1/4 mile performance almost always build with "horsepower" in mind, which usually means more top-end performance, sometimes at the expense of bottom-end performance, where torque rules. Torque and horsepower are directly related, but the HowStuffWorks page can probably explain it better than me. (It'll probably also explain why torque peaks are always lower than HP peaks.)
HTH
Donating Maxima.org Member
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,940
eep! I should've also warned that I'm no expert - more of an "armchair mechanic" than doer (nooo... I don't fix armchairs)
But if it were me modding my car for (basically) drag racing I'd try to get as many power mods as possible - intake, free flowing exhaust & y-pipe, udp's, ecu(?), and anything else I forgot. Then some ways to help me launch better: high perf. clutch or auto tranny VB (and maybe higher stall torque converter??) and fatter/stickier tires. A stiffer suspension helps a little in our...er... your FWD cars because less weight gets transferred off the front wheels during launch (the opposite is true for RWD cars).
I think that it's hard to build an engine for both torque AND horsepower, since as far as I know, building for torque means optimizing low end power and building for horsepower (mainly) means optimizing for mid-high end power. This is related to the size of intake & exhaust passages of the engine, which affects how much air they can flow and at what velocity and best at what RPM, and it gets all complicated and messy.
As a rough guide, free-breathing engines with big intakes and exhaust will work better at higher RPM, while ones with more restrictive systems (like stock for most cars) will work better at low RPM, which is good for the general population that drives around town. Most mods I think will help mainly with mid-high RPMs.
This kind of relates to VTC/VTEC technology which allows the engine to breath more optimally at a wider RPM range than a car without VTC. It does this by altering the length of time the intake/exhaust valves stay open.
As for what's best for the Max, well... that depends on how powerful the engine feels right now and how much off the line "grunt" it has already. I haven't driven a VE Max yet (hope to fix that this weekend) so I can't say. Here's an example of what I mean: Say you have a 5.0 Mustang and want to go faster. It'd be okay to just go nuts and really free up the intake & exhaust and kill some of your low-end to make more top-end because the 5.0 is a really big engine for the car's weight and will have lots of spare torque anyway due to the size of the motor. So you can do this and still comfortably drive the car in the city. But let's say you have a 1990 Integra Type-R (1.7L engine). This engine is kinda small and already built for high RPM power so even driving it around normally you have to keep the revs up just to keep up with traffic. Mod the car to breathe better and you risk making the car even peakier, which would make it faster in the 1/4 mile, but maybe a pain to drive around town.
One thing to note is that stick cars are more forgiving to this kind of modification because you can launch the car at any RPM you want, while auto cars are stuck with whatever RPM the torque converter is set up to launch at. So if you lose any low-end power and it annoys you, it will be more of an irritation in an automatic.
Okay, it's really late now and I think this is the longest post I've ever written, basically emptying my whole theroetical knowledge of horsepower. If anyone with better knowledge or actual practical experience can help out or tell me I'm full of it, go right ahead. I'd better go now so the room stops swaying and I don't do weird things at work tommorow. 
oh and sorry for long post.
But if it were me modding my car for (basically) drag racing I'd try to get as many power mods as possible - intake, free flowing exhaust & y-pipe, udp's, ecu(?), and anything else I forgot. Then some ways to help me launch better: high perf. clutch or auto tranny VB (and maybe higher stall torque converter??) and fatter/stickier tires. A stiffer suspension helps a little in our...er... your FWD cars because less weight gets transferred off the front wheels during launch (the opposite is true for RWD cars).
I think that it's hard to build an engine for both torque AND horsepower, since as far as I know, building for torque means optimizing low end power and building for horsepower (mainly) means optimizing for mid-high end power. This is related to the size of intake & exhaust passages of the engine, which affects how much air they can flow and at what velocity and best at what RPM, and it gets all complicated and messy.
As a rough guide, free-breathing engines with big intakes and exhaust will work better at higher RPM, while ones with more restrictive systems (like stock for most cars) will work better at low RPM, which is good for the general population that drives around town. Most mods I think will help mainly with mid-high RPMs.
This kind of relates to VTC/VTEC technology which allows the engine to breath more optimally at a wider RPM range than a car without VTC. It does this by altering the length of time the intake/exhaust valves stay open.
As for what's best for the Max, well... that depends on how powerful the engine feels right now and how much off the line "grunt" it has already. I haven't driven a VE Max yet (hope to fix that this weekend) so I can't say. Here's an example of what I mean: Say you have a 5.0 Mustang and want to go faster. It'd be okay to just go nuts and really free up the intake & exhaust and kill some of your low-end to make more top-end because the 5.0 is a really big engine for the car's weight and will have lots of spare torque anyway due to the size of the motor. So you can do this and still comfortably drive the car in the city. But let's say you have a 1990 Integra Type-R (1.7L engine). This engine is kinda small and already built for high RPM power so even driving it around normally you have to keep the revs up just to keep up with traffic. Mod the car to breathe better and you risk making the car even peakier, which would make it faster in the 1/4 mile, but maybe a pain to drive around town.
One thing to note is that stick cars are more forgiving to this kind of modification because you can launch the car at any RPM you want, while auto cars are stuck with whatever RPM the torque converter is set up to launch at. So if you lose any low-end power and it annoys you, it will be more of an irritation in an automatic.
Okay, it's really late now and I think this is the longest post I've ever written, basically emptying my whole theroetical knowledge of horsepower. If anyone with better knowledge or actual practical experience can help out or tell me I'm full of it, go right ahead. I'd better go now so the room stops swaying and I don't do weird things at work tommorow.
oh and sorry for long post.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
Unclejunebug
5th Generation Maxima (2000-2003)
10
Apr 2, 2016 05:42 AM