The more I know our cars the less I understand why the manufacturers use such big engines to make so little power.

The suposed High performance standard for an american V8 is one hp per cubic inch that would meant 305ci=305hp, but that is a 5litter engine with only 305hp thats only 61hp per litter!

While is relatively normal to find a 2 liter engine with more than 100hp being a very low performance engine, a 2 litter 2 valves per cil, carbed should make at least that amount. That would mean 250hp on a 5 litter engine, so why its so great when a 305 do that amount?

I always thinked before that a high performance engine should make at least 85hp per litter without any power adder, and with a power adder being a turbo 100hp per litter its minimun.

Why its so dificult to make our engines achieve those numbers?

Can you make an American V8 make 85hp per litter without any power adder, using standard fuel, and being streetable?

 

Well, the only thing I can say is that hp is only part of the equation, torque is very important too.

And I wouldn't say it's realitively normal to find a 2L 200hp engine.
They are out htere but very few do this.

The engines that generate hi hp/per litre have to spin an incredible amount of rpm to do so.

It is far easier on a 4 clyinder to do so then a large V8--it would require a lot osf money to get a V8 to releiable do high rpms for manufacturing purposes.

 

Our car is slow (stock) because it couldnt be faster than the slowest 305 tpi. Plus GM made it to be reliable, which is why the 350 tbi found its way into hundreds of thousands of trucks. TBI is a damn reliable system, easy to maintain and diagnose problems.

But now the gloves are off and some 305 tbis are starting to see the performance side of the story

 

You got me wrong a 2 litter turbo should make near 200hp minimun a 2 litter carbed engine should make minimun 110hp.

I think I can begin to understand the point.
American cars with V8 tend to be pretty heavy, so for them to move pretty fast they need a good amount of torque more than a high Hp, the only way to make high torque cheaply is with high displacement engine no? But then why dont they use Disel instead of gas?

Europeans cars has always been much lighther than american cars so they can concetrate more on hp instead of high torque right?

With the matter of cost.

To obtain reliable high HP per litter whats most needed high tech (variable valve timing, high tech fuel inyection, distributor less systems, 3 or more valves per cilinder) or high quality materials on the pieces using relative low technology? or a combination of both.

I remenber a car that I liked when I was younger, the peugeot 205 rally I remember it had a little four banger with a less than 2 litter and more than 115hp (I think the engine was a 1.3 or 1.6) and my father toll me that the engina is pretty good but it will not last because the hp was made at almost 7200rpm

 

i think you are over analyzing a bit. every north american manufacturer had a series of real dog motors from teh 70's through the late 80's and early 90's.
there is a long standing preception of american push rod motors as being low mileage high polution noise makers. tha tis not entirely off base for most of the century. so the car companies came out with lines of motors that had reasonable power that got better than expected V8 mileage. add to that the ease of production line packaging of a system like tbi adn you have a corporate winner, if not a winner at teh track.
when you compare older style pushrod motors to the modern wonders of variable valves adn stuff you are really comparing apples to oranges.
if you compare the pushrod motors to the n/a overhead cam motors of the 80's and 90's you will really se tha thte hp per liter is similar, once you add all the neato high tech stuff and turbo's that have come more into vogue since then you see the scale shift.
i woudl liek to see more peopel go high tech on old school small blocks and see what happens. my friend has a turbo and dfi powered small block nova that goes 10.4's on only 4psi of boost, all on 93 octane pump gas.
i hope to build a turbo motor one of these days, and it won't be soem little weedwhacker sounding 4cyl. i want to do it to at least 400inches of american push rod motor.

later
tim

 

Tim is right,

In 1971 the EPA handed down emmission requirements to the auto industry that were a bit outlandish for the technology of the time and difficult for such bulbous companies to implement not being used to lots of government intervention. HP to CI numbers dropped like a rock across the auto industry in attempts to lower emissions and increase MPG. Lead was banned from gasoline as a cheap additive to increase octane because of it's harmful effects which also dealt another blow to hp/ci ratios. Gas became expensive and higher compression engines like the ZL1 were out of the question because people wanted to run the cheap stuff. Ultimately, it wasn't until 1994 and '95 that factory produced motors really began to see the same hp/ci ratios they had in '71 and earlier. It took the auto industry 20+ years to recover!

 

So what your saying is that thanks to all those factors the only way american V8 engines could be used without a huge increase in price and a possible huge banckrupt was to scale down CI, compression, put longer final ratios etc to kept the fuel consumtion low, and the goverment and users (general users not power users ) happy.

But why have the auto industry in USA has taken so much time in recover from that? Becouse the goverment kept making the restrictions every year thighter?

So Europe and Japan toke a completely different route agains the energy crisis.

So im asking to myself whats gonna be of the american muscle cars now that we dont have the f-body anymore, only the mustang, corvette and vipers (that each year get more out of my reach)

Do someone else think that GM will relaunch the f-body better than ever with a next generation V8 (like the northstar from caddy) a good quality chasis, to make it attractive again like it was in the 80´s when it sold almost 200thousand units each year.

I will pray for it.

 

The US auto industry took years to recover in part due to the following:

1-The economy at the time sucked a$$

2-There was a severe oil crisis between the late 70's and early 80's

3-import manufacturers like honda and toyota were aggressively manufacturing, marketing and selling cheaper and better cars. Furthermore, the US big 3 (GM, Ford, Chrysler) were getting a bad rep for making poor quality cars. Throughout the 80's and well into the 90's the most popular cars were Japanese (Accords and Camry's). It took the birth of the minivan and SUV to really get the big 3 back on equal footing.

People are back to buying big engines again, just not in sportscars.

 

Very true. For some reason alot of people are buying overpriced SUVs....

why I have no idea.

How many people in SUVs actually use it? Im not talking about going to pick up grocerys or take your kids to soccar practice. Thats a job for a van! All SUVs are is a van with 4 wheel drive IMO. I f i was gonna have a SUV i would have a SUV....33inch mickey thompson superswampers with a 4 inch lift at least and i would take it offroad.

why drive a slow SUV with a big motor that gets terrible MPG. its not practical...most people do not need a SUV i dont understand the trend...a couple years ago it was vans...now SUVs. also arent SUVs some of the most dangerous vehicles???

what happened to the sports cars?? this years camaro and mustang were both fast but thats about all america had to offer this year...sports car sells are down for GM do what do they do...discontinue an american icon. more and more forgien cars are coming out as "sports cars" and doing great but the american companies arent doing so hot.

someone will probably argue that the mustang is a top seller....of course it is. Its mainly the v6 model tho which many many girls drive....

just my .2 cents

 

I think the problem is that US manufacturers toke the wrong aproach to the oil crisis.

And the SUV thing that was just some factors one afther the another, cheap gas prices=Big Engines with very low eficiency, BIG SUV the conception that they are more secure as you have more mass to ram out of throuble (yea right instead of going witt active security like aceleration, handling and braking US chose the complete oposite aproach), Complete different regulation for emissions in cars and SUV (If expeditions an excursions are trucks like a pickup is a truck they should try to limit theyr speed like they do in europe where those kind of industrial vehicles have a badge that limit theyr speed to only 80kph aprox 50mph and limit their use to a fixed number of years also I think they have to pass annual security checks) a diferent license for such huge and heavy vehicles would be nice.

Why the big thre insist on making such big and heavy vehicles couse that wats sell, why none of then have tryed to make reductions in weight with the use of lighter materials?

Why they insist on making such huge engines with such a low eficiency cose they need big engines to move such heavy vehicles.
(you need a lot of torque to make those things move but to keep it cheap you dont put variable anything, iron blocks, limit the rpm and use cheap everything to keept it cheap)

Its always a fight in the cost-quality-market.

That work until you get a huge gas price increase and then you began the circle again, why not try and copy the good stuff on import vehicles while trying to mantain a design of their own?

 

materials = cost increases = lowered profits. these guys aren't makin cars for fun like most fo us would, it is a mega billion dollar industry. they have stock holders to answer to, and that greed does not always maek the best product.
they make huge SUV's because they sell. everytime in the last 10 years a comp[any has come out with a bigger/more luxury soccer mom mobile it has instantly become the top seller in the class.
as americans we live in a much different culture than europe and asia. comparing how they go about things to how americans go about things is never gonna work. their dominant market is for small cars with gobs of power, that get good mileage. in the us, teh corvette still out sells the WRX, even though the WRX gets 15 more mpg, weighs 450lbs less, and costs 12-14k less.
the difference in places is what you seem to be failing to see. the information age made teh world smaller, it didn't make us al live on the same virtual street.
i will take american iron over some little **** burner any day of the week and twice on sunday. you can't replace the sound of a V8.
by the way, if you wanna really wonder which culture is working, gm controls 1/3 of the world automobile production market. there are literally a few hundred car companies, and gm supplies materials/labor/production for 33% of them.
for a company that so many financial "experts" say is doing so many things wrong, they really seem to have it knocked.

later
tim

 

Well yes Im aware of that, if you put a piece that cost 2$ on a vehicle that sell 1 million units a year that cost you 2 millions so if you find a lower quality-less durable piece that cost 89cents you end with 890 thousands of dollars some savings no?

If you use that same piece on various models you end saving a lot of money to make happy the share holders. I understand the basics of the market.

Its just that not everyone thinks like this, and preffer the quality (to a limit as always) aproach, to increase the "will buy from the same" ratio.

Other companies make asosiations so the can develop an engine with lower costs so the same basic pieces can be used on much more engines, so they recover the R&D costs much quickly.

Some companies make cookie cutter normal quality cars and use a different brand for their really high quality cars while both share the same platform (Toyota-Lexus). While compnies Like Dodge think that they can Improve their brand doing a super car like the Viper, and ford the "future" GT-40. (Dodge think they can sell more Neons couse the improvement in brand caused by the Viper, or the Viper will fail and will be looked like a bad quality car couse the other dodges?)

Some company make compromises on their philosophy so they can survive (Porsche making an SUV)

Yes I do like how American V8 engines snap your neck when you go WOT, and I really like how a V8 sound (being mild or wild).

But to have a car that I really like I would need to remake everything on my car (From chassis, suspenssion, interior, brakes, you know everything) but retaining the style that is what really sold me the car.

The good thing is that you can actually make it, the bad thing is the cost of doing that, off course you can make your ideal car in years, couse the car that you like dont really exist but in your head. Other kind of people just think of cars in a complete different way and think that the only way to obtain a dream car is having loots of money, but they will never think about making the car.

 

I'd still like to beat the loser that decided to put the 305 TBI in an F-body! Supposed to be a sports car. It doesn't deserve a crappy pickup truck engine.

Funny all Mustangs were port injected....
ah well...I was dumb enough to buy it...thought I wouldn't mind.

 

if you don't want to see a "truck" motor in a car then you don't want any of the great muscle cars of history. the hemi, the big block chevy and ford FE motors were originally designed to create a lot of torque to haul things with. only teh secodn generation hemi was actually thought out as a power plant for racing from its inception.
as far as ford usign port injected 6's and 4's along with a port injected 8, so what? i never had a problem handling a 6cyl mustang, even when my car was still stock. so i coudln't beat a gt or 5.0 car, the RS and base birds were meant to be for the mass market, not for the racers. that is why they get insured as compact cars and not sports cars liek Z28's Formula's, adn T/A's.

later
tim

 

Another thing to consider is the gas mileage over the production line. If I am not mistaken the feds tell the manufacturers they have to average a certain mpg over their production line. So the more 20mpg LO3's they sell, then the more 12mpg Suburbans they can sell. And the Suburbans are probably a higher profit margin.

 

Technically the Camaro and Mustang are pony cars.

 

all this discussion shows us that the U.S. is very different in automobiels culture wise. And it has been for decades. I love my camaro, I love the v8, the looks and everything else that makes it American. And also I agree that the manufactures have made some mistake over the years. What I want to see is a muscle car like the 60's camaro and chevell built today, with more horse power and great american styling. I don't care about all the little gadgets and ****, all I would want is power windows, locks a great sound system and lots of power! :lala:

 

ah best big block Chev was a 427---at least they had the decency to put a performance cam in a pony, muscle car and other changes to make it worthy of a Camaro ect. 305 TBI isn't.
Hey, I'll live with it. Maybe for an RS it's okay.
But it really trashes Trans Ams, Formulas and IROCs.

 

:nono: :nono:






hehe, just messin with ya. I do wish my car was faster, but then again don't we all!!! the 305 will do till summer, and then...

MUHAHAHAHAHAHA I'm cooking up a 400hp 355, well, pending my wallet doesn't implode