{"id":20905,"date":"2022-04-27T12:03:43","date_gmt":"2022-04-27T16:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=20905"},"modified":"2022-04-27T12:03:43","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T16:03:43","slug":"torque-vs-horsepower-meaning-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/autosector.com\/?p=20905","title":{"rendered":"Torque and horsepower: What they mean and why they’re different"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may have heard it before: \u201cHorsepower sells cars<\/a>; torque wins races.\u201d But what is torque and why does it matter? We\u2019re not engineers here, even when we play them on YouTube, so we\u2019re going to give you the non-engineer explanation and do our best not to make you feel like a photography major in a gen-ed math class. Let\u2019s dive in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Torque<\/h2>\n

Torque is how you get things done, mechanically speaking. Turning a knob, opening a valve, working a lever \u2014 these are everyday applications of the concept. In essence, it\u2019s a measurement of the amount of work being done by something. Or, put a bit more plainly (and unscientifically), it\u2019s a measure of leverage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Your typical physics teacher will probably demonstrate the concept with some sort of simple lever, but this is Autoblog<\/em>, not West Crestfield Senior High, so let\u2019s use car stuff, shall we? The best way to easily visualize torque is not with engine components, but with a lug wrench.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why a lug wrench? Because torque is a multiplicative measurement of an amount of force being delivered over a given distance. That\u2019s why automotive engine torque is expressed in pound-feet; you\u2019re applying a force (in pounds) over a distance (in feet).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more: Why do so many cars have 2.0-liter turbo engines? A closer look<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Scenario: You\u2019ve pulled off into a parking lot with a flat tire. You\u2019ve got a properly inflated spare, a jack and a typical lug wrench. For the purposes of this example, let\u2019s say that lug wrench\u2019s handle is one foot (12\u201d) long. You line up the jack at the proper point and you\u2019re ready to loosen those lug nuts before you put the wheel in the air. You stick the lug wrench on and give it a good, assertive yank counter-clockwise \u2026 and nothing happens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What do you do? Go ahead, shout out the answer if you know it. If you said \u201cget a longer lug wrench,\u201d you\u2019re correct. \u201cYank harder\u201d would have also been correct, because increasing either the distance (length of the wrench handle) or force (yanking harder) would increase the amount of torque you were applying to that lug nut.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But you can only yank so hard, and the more you try, the more fatigued you will become. You can replace yourself with a larger, more forceful human (diesels<\/a> are torquey; try Vin) or you can get a better tool. But there are no lug wrench stores around (what, you don\u2019t have lug wrench stores?), just a one-window hardware store, a liquor joint and a couple hair and nail salons. So, you wander into the hardware store and ask the clerk if they carry lug wrenches.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t. Just your luck! But since you now understand how torque works, you know that all you need is something that will make your lug wrench handle longer, like a piece of pipe that will fit over the grip. So you buy a 4-foot length of metal pipe, walk outside, and twist those suckers right off, because now you\u2019re applying four times the force you were with that one-foot wrench handle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Horsepower<\/h2>\n

Now that you understand torque, understanding the difference between it and horsepower is much easier. The beauty of torque is that\u2019s a very simple \u201ccan it be done?\u201d formula. You need to move something that requires X force and you have Y foot-pounds of leverage to apply. If Y is greater than or equal to X, you can move it. So why do we care about horsepower?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Horsepower is a more complex measurement because it accounts for time, referred to mathematically as rate. In other words, if torque tells you whether you can do something at all, horsepower tells you how quickly you can get it done. To calculate it, you multiply torque (in pound-feet) by speed (in RPM, in the case of a car) and divide the total by 5,252. Why 5,252?<\/a> Because it\u2019s a mathematical constant, as in \u201cwhy are you constantly asking us questions we don\u2019t feel like answering?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go back to that flat tire scenario. Let\u2019s say that hardware store was fresh out of anything you could use to make the lug wrench longer and Vin Diesel has ghosted your Insta chat. So while you can\u2019t make yourself stronger, you may be able to find ways to increase the force you\u2019re applying to the end of the wrench. Like, say, using a hammer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With that hammer, you can apply more force to the end of the wrench handle, but you\u2019re not going to just use it to help you yank, right? You\u2019re going to hit the thing. Each of these momentary bursts of force is greater than the constant amount you can apply to the handle by yanking on it, and sure enough, each impact starts to loosen the lug nut.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Bang. Bang. Bang. Eventually, it\u2019s loose enough that you can use the wrench (and eventually your fingers) to do the rest. No, you didn\u2019t apply as much torque as you would have using a longer wrench, so it took a little longer. The rate at which you accomplished the work decreased, but you eventually got it done. This is the same basic premise behind a handheld impact gun. You\u2019re delivering quick, powerful bursts of torque over and over again to incrementally apply leverage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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So, yes, if you had a large enough impact gun, you could use it to turn the crankshaft on your car and move it down the road, but even a hypothetical monster impact gun isn\u2019t going to be able to move a many-thousand-pound vehicle down the road very quickly. It has the leverage (torque) to get it going, in other words, but not very quickly (horsepower).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, this is how an internal combustion engine works, only you have multiple wrenches (your connecting rods) applying torque to your nut (the crankshaft) hundreds of times per second. And to take that analogy further, the crankshaft in turn (sorry) becomes a giant wrench that you\u2019re using to turn your flywheel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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This is the point where an engine\u2019s torque output is actually measured. Every part of your powertrain downstream of the crankshaft is just another wrench turning yet another component, and using this analogy, your transmission is basically a box of differently sized wrenches, allowing you to choose the best one for the job you\u2019re trying to perform. Wrenches. Wrenches everywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n