need me to help you guys stay on topic?

thanks

 

I don't want to sound arrogant here, guys, but this move is way, WAY, WAY overdue on Toyota's part. It's always easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but I've been saying this for years, not just the day after the game. Toyota should have done this from the very get-go in 1994, when the first T100 / 150 came out, instead of screwing around with mid-sized, mid-engined trucks that were falsely pawned off and marketed as " full-sizers." They were NOT full-sizers, and even the Tundra was not a true full-sizer either.

Now....FINALLY.....we have TRUE Toyota full-sizers, both in truck size and engines, but they are VERY late to the game. If Toyota had paid attantion to its own American-market representatives and done this back in the 90's when it should have been done, the company would be in a much stronger truck marketing position today, but because they didn't ( until now ) they are paying a hefty price.


Nissan did it correctly from the very start with the Titan and made a true full-size truck, but that truck's poor quality and unreliability kept it from being real competition with Detroit's full-sizers. Toyota generally doesn't have that problem....another reason they should have done it years ago.

 

Speaking of the new Tundra at Sema...

The X-Runner's bigger bro w/the Eaton roots s/c made by Magnusson (same company that has been making the TRD/Eaton Roots S/C in the past) ....





And the big Motorsports monster...


Not a Tundra...but iForce V8 powered. My friend at Toyota put majority of this together. It's a Tacoma Access Cab put on a modified/shortened Double Cab Short Bed chassis. The last time I saw this thing was a few months back. The cab was on a hoist...and the 2UZ-FE's engine mounts were just being fabbed.

 

I'll take my own pics of these particular rigs this week. I will post them up after I return from the show.

 

I know the SEMA show is probably not the best environment for this, flip, being mostly customized and concept vehicles, but if there are any Toyota factory people there, see if there is any word on a big Tundra diesel or a dual-rear wheelie to compete with the Ford/Chevy/Dodge 3500 series.

 

He is one of the very few guys I PM with questions or comparing cars, MMarshall, Rominl are others that come to mind.

He knows his stuff...way more technical than me.

 

The merits of the power ratings of a truck motor is pretty on topic when discussing... well, the power ratings of a new truck motor!

...IMO

- but I think what you're really saying is you don't like people arguing/disagreeing in which case - OK.

 

I'm not an engineer, but here are some formulas to help you guys in this area:
http://www.iprocessmart.com/techsmart/formulas.htm

 

Spot on!

I wish sometimes manufacturers would just quit it with the peak numbers and give oh I dunno, something like audio manufacturers give with frequency ranges.

Like maybe say xxx average horsepower from xxxx rpm until xxxx rpm, +/- xx horsepower.

Or maybe xxx+ torque or horsepower from xxxx rpm to xxxx rpm - though I know some already do that - but mainly just the ones who have something worth bragging about (a flat and broad torque curve)

I know to the average person that could be confusing, but that might at least give people an idea of the power under the curve on a given motor, short of actual printed out dyno charts.

Wait, hey, that's not a bad idea! Dyno charts in every mag review and press release!

 

That my friend is because of MARKETING. Its how cars with poor reliablity or crappy interiors sell.
Marketing. X car has 240 hp, it has 280 hp, it has 300hp, it has 360hp, it has 420 hp, it has 500hp etc etc etc.

Its one thing non car people seem to care about. Peak power, no matter HOW unusable it is.

 

so let's see.

i put up a request to ask people to get back on topic, especially after your taunting post which was unnecessary, not funny, and not part of discussing hp and tq.

apparently not only that you didn't agree, you decided to challenge a moderator's request, which is against the forum rules:

so let me get it straight here. i have no problem with people discussing and debating here, as long as they are constructive, on topic, and to the point. i do not want to see any personal attacks, taunting, or teasing posts here, and i take that very seriously. moreover, going head to head with a moderator's decision in the public is not something we will allow here as well.

so when you come back in couple of days, learn

 

Guys, not sure what is going on in Car Chat but its not going to last. We are dead serious about respect and following the rules.

We are ADULTS here, if you cannot follow a topic or listen to a moderators request, maybe join offtopic.net or something....

 

They still need turbo diesel V8

 

It's ok because you don't know me, and because I don't post here very much. I should more though, because this is one of my favorite little corners of the net for a lot of different reasons. At the same time, this is also why I don't post much on the Internet anymore.

Anyways, I used to post stuff up like this and this and this as just a few examples. That's done in Excel, and I wrote the application myself. You dump in specs for the cars right down to frontal area, drag coefficient, and even tire sag factor, along with the best true average right down the middle Dynojet 248C dyno you can find for a car and it plots thrust and acceleration at all speeds, all gears, all RPMs, and then it does the same thing for another car to compare right on top of it. About 25 or 30 charts in all. Can also compare powerband as a percentage, and I even have it calculate aerodynamic drag so that the high speed acceleration curves are accurate. It's usually within +/- 1 mph on the top speed where acceleration hits zero. RACE ENGINEERS have software that does exactly this only of course far more sophisticated and accurate. I stopped posting these on forums because it's just too much for most people. I guess they'd prefer way more ambiguous things like indirect and random magazine times, or far more random street or track encounters where you never really know, and you can argue until you're blue in the face. This was just way too solid because it clearly shows where one car has a distinct advantage over another. At a given speed in a given gear, an engine will be at a certain RPM where it produces "x" amount of torque which will result in a calculated amount of thrust at the wheels, which after accounting for weight and drag factors results in a calculated acceleration. This is either more or less than the compared car in a similar state. Very simple. Analysis like this shows how a little Acura TSX 6MT with only a 2.4L 4-cyl and 200hp and a wimpy 166 lb-ft of torque can beat my 3.0L Maxima at the LOW-END despite my 190hp/205tq. I actually beat out the TSX at the TOP-end despite having less peak horsepower (it's all in the gearing) which is completely counter-intuitive. Even I never would have guessed that. The only way you can really see this is with direct head-to-head thrust analysis like this. The TSX 6MT is an amazing little car. Unfortunately Honda put the most pathetic gearing in the 5AT version and that one is a dog. The one that shows my Maxima beating an Acura CL-S up to about 60 mph, and then after that I get smoked? That made me the most hated person on the Honda forums for a few years. People like to think their cars are all-powerful and superior cars that will beat similarly performing competing cars at all points, all gears, and everything, but that's rarely if ever so, and if it was it would be obvious without even looking at charts like these. It'd be the difference between say a GS430 and the 300. Duh, obviously the 430 is faster. All those cars above (Maxima, CL-S, TSX) can run practically the same times at the track, but they all have very different acceleration curves and profiles. One high-14/low-15 ET is not necessarily equal to another identical ET. The TSX takes off quick but loses steam up top. The CL-S is slow off the line but really hauls after 60 mph. My Maxima is in the middle somewhere. Very different "street" acceleration profiles and butt-dyno feels can still result in the same ET.

I do apologize for the rolling eye smiley, but I think now you see why your comment might have been just a bit amusing to me. I did mean to say "PEAK" horsepower is meaningless on trucks and thought it would have been implied via context but I guess not. Peak Horsepower is an extremely overrated spec and is really just for marketing and advertising IMHO. Everybody thinks more is always better, but even on Formula 1 cars that isn't always true. As for the Tundra engine, I'd like to see how much torque this puppy has and at what RPM it occurs. Yes, you're correct. Even if it has peak torque advertised at 3200 rpm vs say the Silverado 6.0 which has peak torque listed at 4300 rpm that still doesn't mean the Tundra would have "more low-end". I've seen dynos for cars with peak torque rated at something like 2800 or 3200 rpm fall right off a fricken cliff below that, LOL. So you do still need to see the whole curve, dyno it, or just go drive the stupid thing. If you have some flat road, you can also reverse calculate the power curve if you have a decent accelerometer like a G-tech pro thingy. I used to have one of those, and used it to calibrate the accuracy of my Excel program. It's a tad optimistic at low speeds in 1st and 2nd gears due to much greater inertial drag from much higher acceleration rates than what you have on the dyno in 3rd or 4th gear. Power ratings are all at the mercy of the marketing departments anyways though, who commonly manipulate them to sex them up a bit, or completely spin pretty pathetic specs to try to fool people into thinking it's good. Revised SAE J1349 specs as of Aug 2004 will help to tighten that up a TON so there's less room for the marketing dolts to "manipulate" what the engine is actually doing on paper. Maybe I'll pay more attention to power ratings now, because there was TONS of inconsistency before. There's also "SAE Certified" on top of that. If I wanted to, I could actually go and buy all the test data for the Z06 LS7 engine from SAE.org. I'm a member so I get discounts. I'm not sure it's out there publicly, but all the official data is available, and rather pricey. Published power curves on window stickers would be nice, but way too much info for 99% of people out there, and still pretty useless unless you have good points of comparison. And the marketing dweebs would manipulate that anyways with all sorts of funky scales to make it look however they wanted. Somebody could easily come across thinking that one car had way way more torque and a better power curve than another when it was really just the stupid scales that were different between the two cars, lol. Too much info = mass confusion. Horsepower is what goes on the stickers and it's all that most people understand, even though it's probably the most useless spec and means relatively little in terms of street car performance and whether you'll actually enjoy driving the car or not. More doesn't necessarily mean faster either, but that's already been covered.

So yeah, I like to think I know at least a little bit about automotive performance and engine power curves, and the difference between power and torque. But thanks for clarifying. Don't feel bad though, because I admit I was being a smartass, set you up a bit, and you fell right into my trap. I had a little fun at your expense and I knew 1sick would get it. This does help to illustrate a much larger point about forums like these, though. All too often people are just "presumed stupid" before they even have a chance to clarify or counterpoint. Or what one says is completely misinterpreted or selectively interpreted negatively and pounced upon and no clarification is even accepted. "You're stupid period." And I think EVERYBODY is guilty of this to vary degrees at one point or another, myself included. That's just the tip of the iceberg though, unfortunately. You could have given me the benefit of the doubt and assumed that I did mean peak horsepower but you didn't. Again, I thought it was implied via context. You then chose to make the most negative possible conclusions about me, although about as far from the truth as you can get. (Granted, I did set you up on the last part). I'm fed up enough with forums these days due to this and tons of other stuff like it that I just don't post much anymore. I'll have to talk to Mike about his "T.E.M." thingy. I can't stand most other forums, but this place I like.


I'm sure the final specs on the Tundra's engine will be impressive, but I think that's nothing compared to the Tundra's potential problems. I personally hate the styling although I haven't seen it in person yet, there's no turbodiesel offered yet and Toyota doesn't appear to have a suitable in-house one either, and it'll probably also lack the zillions of configuration options that the Big 2.5 trucks have. It'll probably get more sales than the previous Tundra, but I don't think this'll make a huge impact on the domestic truck market, and Toyota isn't expecting it to either.

 

That was one awesome read Steve!

Can you send me the excel spreadsheet? I would like to do the same calibration on my car. Thanks!

My email address is - hameed at prudensconsulting dot com