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http://www.motorbikes.be/en/Suzuki/2005/GSX-R%201000/

i can picture horsepower, in this case... 178hp is like having 178 horses pulling a 400lbs carriage.

but torque? 120 Nm (88.5 ft lbs) @ 0 rpm???

can someone paint me a picture of what this means?

sorry... ...no idea

I will take my very crappy guess at this and have someone down the road quote my post and laugh at my stupidity.


Torque, first of all, is a very shitty movie.


Second of all, it's also the power to turn something. When you tighten a nut with a ratchet, that's torque. When you're pulling on the plug of a lock while picking it, you're generating torque. When you're turning a wheel, you're creating torque.

A Nm is a Newton Meter which, if I recall correctly, is equal to .7 feet/lb which is probably what the number in parantheses is refering to.


So my guess is the ability of the wheels to spin and the forces that are generated from said spinning.

*takes a bow and walks off stage*

Shiv wrote: Torque, first of all, is a very shitty movie.

you say it like it is.

Shiv wrote:I will take my very crappy guess at this and have someone down the road quote my post and laugh at my stupidity.


Torque, first of all, is a very shitty movie.


Second of all, it's also the power to turn something. When you tighten a nut with a ratchet, that's torque. When you're pulling on the plug of a lock while picking it, you're generating torque. When you're turning a wheel, you're creating torque.

A Nm is a Newton Meter which, if I recall correctly, is equal to .7 feet/lb which is probably what the number in parantheses is refering to.


So my guess is the ability of the wheels to spin and the forces that are generated from said spinning.

*takes a bow and walks off stage*

ok, what does 88.5 ft/lbs mean in regards to spinning the wheel?

ft/lbs... i don't get this unit of measurement.

I don't know, stop asking all these difficult questions. I'm having a hard enough time with the counter-steering thing.

I'll google it though and try and find the answer. Watch this post.

Edit: Aha! Got a straight answer finally:

A foot pound of torque is the twisting force necessary to support a one pound weight on a weightless horizontal bar, one foot from the fulcrum.

Now, it's important to understand that nobody on the planet ever actually measures horsepower from a running engine. What we actually measure (on a dynomometer) is torque, expressed in foot pounds (in the U.S.), and then we *calculate* actual horsepower by converting the twisting force of torque into the work units of horsepower.

Oh and to cite my sources so I don't get a 0 for plagairism like that one time in art class...

http://vettenet.org/torquehp.html


Read everything down from The Case for Torque

thanks, but my head hurts.

i'll go to sleep now.

"Horsepower is how fast you hit the wall, torque is how far you take the wall with you." Or something to that effect.

Anyways, horsepower is calculated from engine speed and torque. Torque is what gets the work done. It's the turning force that makes your wheel(s) move.

Does that clarify things at all?

I did my best to explain this here -

http://www.maditalia.info/iso/comparison.html