Power to Weight

[CMF_White Knight]

Think this will be an interesting thread.
What does say a common V8 weight ( say 1380kg?) pushing out say around 185 kw.Power to weight would be 185/1380 x 1000=
134kw/tonne.
Say Whitey weights around 830kg allowing for bigger wheels etc.and pushing out 100kw. 100/830x1000=120kw/tonne.
For every 6kg loss of weight I would pick up another 1kw/tonne. If mine weighted 810 kg as per original spec I would have close to 123.5kw/tonne.
Come on Cisco do the sums on Blue Monster. THis will be scary.
If you were in the market for a performance car this is one equasion I would be looking at.

 

[cisco]

Yeah good thread for sure. Plus you've only quoted your car's Kw at the wheels figure, but its probably making close to 115-120Kw at the flywheel which is the figure the manufacturers go off. So you're power to weight is already heaps better. And then you have the handling and braking advantages from the smaller cars. And it does all this while burning half the fuel. That's what you want.

The brand new V8s are more like 1700Kg which is just amazingly heavy isn't it. Far out heh.

Re: Blue Monster. I'm keen to get an updated weigh bridge reading since removing ABS, rear seats etc. Should be somewhere between 800-820Kg I'd guess. So just as a rough example:

Power-Weight
V8: 1700Kg / 285Kw = 167kw per tonne
Micra: 800Kg / 160Kw = 200Kw per tonne

Torque to weight:
V8: 1700Kg / 500Nm = 294Nm per tonne
Micra: 800Kg / 310Nm = 387Nm per tonne
[Obviously my current turbo only makes that peak torque after a big spike, where as a V8 has a lot of torque everywhere, so its a lot more useful at 2000rpm for towing a boat compared to my torque curve.. But this is where White Knight comes in! But if I'm in the right range, say anywhere above 4000rpm, then it gets down to business]

I mean so it ends up with a decent advantage over say a brand new 285kw clubsport or whatever, but you also have to throw in the factors like front-wheel-drive. So you can't use that big power to weight ratio to anywhere near its full potential because of the FWD limitations. But again, another bonus you get is that smaller, lighter cars are so much more responsive and can get off the line pretty well even being FWD just because they are pretty light and you still have 195 tyres regardless.

You should work out the torque range figures of White Knight properly. I.e. makes X Nm at 2000rpm, and X Nm at 6000rpm. That would be REALLY interesting and good to see against the corresponding figures of a Clubsport. I.e. does White Knight accelerate as hard as a V8 would at 2000RPM etc. I'm keen to know..!

 

[CMF_micrat]

Dave what you miscalculated is that the 185kw that the V8 taxi has is at the flywheel. While your car's 100kw is at the wheels, expecting a fairly efficient fwd driveline to only lose about 15% that would put car's power at about 117kw at the flywheel. Recalculate this 117/830x1000=141kw/tonne. That is better than the v8 taxi! and what's more it would out brake and out handle it too!