High power diesels and drive trains

Clutch is the weak link but it will hold more than they are rated for. If you do the math a normal hp truck in low gears puts more torque to the drive shaft and rears than a high hp truck at highway speeds.
1850 torque through first gear is over 22,000 lbs of torque to the drive shaft..... Nothing compared to the 3-4000 lbs of torque that go through the trans at highway speeds of a high hp truck.
That's why with a high hp truck you don't go full power on the low side of the transmission. You can get up over 40,000 lbs of torque to the drive shaft!

 

Also if you are a plane guy HP is king.

Torque is for desiels as a expression of a force required to halt the rotation of the engine. As the previous poster stated, tossing in a good transmission with low enough gearing you can move the planet earth itself.

The problem is you will not see 950 horse applications on OTR work. No way. 600 to 650 max maybe. Most companies casterate the trucks with maybe a 450 or a 500 engine and save tens of thousands of dollars.

The torque expressed by a ordinary company desiel engine is not going to be that awesome. There are ratings you can have put on a given rig like a rotator, fire engine pumper, ladder cannon truck etc and only special tuning for that particular application with certain parts to match it's power and tolerance before breaking at those high levels of power. You wont find ordinary POS 1300 torque spicer shafts here.

If you examine a power curve of a Desiel engine, considering the 500 Detriot of which I am familiar with.

600 rpm is low idle. You will not produce working power until around 1250 torque. But I make it 1350 due to the number of Newbies coming here thinking they can shift a big engine that low down in RPM's they don't understand how easily it is to flub a shift that slow. Does that make sense to you at all? I hope so. IF not? Someone else can write it.

At 1350 is your peak torque. as you gain RPM's towards say 1600 you gain horsepower. But at 1600 roughly your horsepower chart is going to simply peak at max horse power potential then fall down on it's face beyond 1600 into the 2000's territory.

I can bury you in more statistics. But I wont. I'll be nice here. After all this might be a beginning of a beautiful understanding of engines for some people who visit here.

I once flew with a pilot friend of mine (Sometimes paying cash money towards the fuel burn per hour.. which was pretty... dear in those days. Anyhow. He found a certain RPM at which we hung our prop on final into a stiff gale with 35 steady.

Carroll County offered us runway (KDMA, I think KDFK is the closest smaller port when you consider that KDMA is the emergency inbound field able to take 737 in short final (Not necessarily fly one out... durr hu44rr...) in service to KBWI and also to DULLES.

Anyway.

The stiff breeze allowed us to settle that 172 on to the wind that was nice and steady during landing even though the occasional trashcan was tumbling across the still dry flight area. Hello Unicom, traffic trashcan at 4 oClock heavy, low and bounces too.

Dover AFB might have something to say about that should you sqauwk about that on "Their nice" radios with such words...

The real reward we were seeking was to actually complete a landing, and roll out all on the same set of two very large numbers painted into the un way.

To this day I do not attempt number landings unless it is carefully simulated in selected hurrican force winds. And I bring a 747-800 to the fight. Next would maybe be a A380 rail bus, not sure whichway it is. We have two pending storms now but no planes or airports to fly andman into them.

 

Wanna bet?

 

Speaking of hp I traded my 06 W900l (ACERT) last week for a used 13 Pete glider (6NZ). It was the stock 550. What a long painful week....... but I was able to make the trip to VA today. I'll be installing the turbo, that was dropped shipped earlier this week, in the morning. He said I'll really like it. He was right last time about the ACERT I'm sure that trend will continue.

 

I want high horse as much as you do. Ive had enough of trackies hogging all the horses in their engines and 80 ton combat vehicles. 1000? 1200? (Have you heard those new Leopards coming out with the 1400 desiel engines? They sound really noice... all growl and no bs.

Would have loved to swipe a block and shove it under the hood on one foot straight pipe.

 

Now add in torque multiplication from the differential at a 4.33:1 ratio. Think of those poor axle shafts lol.

 

Lots of wind and noise

 

46 rears help too.....