Stupid question but anyway... i've never known what the difference is between HP and BHP. I know, well at least i think i am correct in thinking that HP is horsepower and BHP is brake horse power? Why is BHP most commonly used to give a representation of how powerful a car is? sorry for being retarded if it is painfully obvious
One Horse Power comes from pit ponies...Watt I think coined the term. Something like one horse raising 330lbs of coal 100feet = 1HP *Googles* Okay... *n
Brake Horse Power means the amout of hourse power at the brakes, or the tires, vs what you have at the flywheel. always a lower number but it is a better more real world performace number. fix for my piss poor spelling. the flywheel is the big round thing that your crank attaches to, and it is what gets the power out of the engine to the transmision.
The flywheel is a big metal wheel that is attached to the output shaft of the engine. This flywheel then gets mated up to the clutch assembly which transfers the energy to the transmission. Back to the original question.... Usually when a car is rated at a certain hp, that is what the engine hp is at the crank. BHP or WHP is what is known as brake horse power or wheel horse power. The hardest hp to get is AWHP, which is All Wheel Horse Power. I have yet to find a place that I can dyno my AWD Talon on that is close to me (here in Ohio).
A flywheel smooths out the operation of the engine, you don't ever want to see an engine run without the flywheel!!
Some engines might not run at all without a flywheel, it's what's responsible for keeping the engine turning before the combustion part of the 4-stroke cycle. (During idle of course)
To make the flywheel easier to understand... Imagine you're holding a heavy hammer. Now if you swing your arm, the weight of the hammer gives your arm more momentum which makes it easier to swing. Unfortunately it also makes it harder to get the swing going. Likewise, the heavier the flywheel, the harder it is to get going but the easier it will keep spinning once up to speed. This is why you see 'performance' flywheels which are lightened and balanced. It is possible to by flywheel-less. Toyota were nearly there in the nineties before they got banned from the World Rally scene. It does call for EXTREMELY precise manufacturing but it is doable. The result is an unbelievably responsive engine. *n
Wow penski I never knew that. Nice facts for a n00b car dude like me . I know NOTHING about cars but on the computer side that's something different
a little adendum....toyota was able to do that, because they used a semiautomatic gearbox which shifted so fast, that the shifts had to wait for the engine to lose the correct amount of speed to match to the next gear. karts and F1 cars don't use the cluthc/flywheel at all, they just yank it out of gear, and then jam it into the next gear, the timing is important to make sure that engine has lost enough revs. often they have to wait for the engine..this means that they can do with less momentum preventing the engine from coasting down, therefore they can go lighter on the flywheel which has other beneifits, meaning a faster shift means more than just faster gear engagments in improving acceleration
