You can't have your cake an eat it too!
Let's compart two engines - the 327/300 and 327/340 in '63. The 300 made more peak torque (360 lb-ft @ 3200) than the 340 (344 @ 4000). If fact the 300 made more torque, which means it made more power (HP=TxN/5252) than the 340 up to about 3500 RPM. At that point the 300's torque begins to drop faster while the 340's torque continues to climb a bit, then level off and not drop much until about 5500 RPM. This is because the Duntov cam shifted the entire torque curve about a thousand revs up the scale, but the increase in top end power came at the expense of low end torque, and therefore, low end power. It's power that accelerates a car and that's why a torque shy engine with lot's of top end power need a "shorter" gear. When we say an engine has lots of torque, we are saying that it has lots of low end power. Modern engines use all kinds of tricks such as variable valve timing and variable inlet tract lengths to try to flatten the torque curve as much as possible, but an absolutely flat torque curve has yet to be achieve, although the "torque bandwidwith" of modern engines is much better than our vintage engines.
BTW, we refer to the top gear in the transmission as "high" eventhough it's lower numerically than the other gears. This is because it provides a higher speed at the same revs. Rather than talk about "high" or "low numerical", how about if we standardize on "short" for a high numerical ratio and "tall" for a low numerical ratio.
Duke
Let's compart two engines - the 327/300 and 327/340 in '63. The 300 made more peak torque (360 lb-ft @ 3200) than the 340 (344 @ 4000). If fact the 300 made more torque, which means it made more power (HP=TxN/5252) than the 340 up to about 3500 RPM. At that point the 300's torque begins to drop faster while the 340's torque continues to climb a bit, then level off and not drop much until about 5500 RPM. This is because the Duntov cam shifted the entire torque curve about a thousand revs up the scale, but the increase in top end power came at the expense of low end torque, and therefore, low end power. It's power that accelerates a car and that's why a torque shy engine with lot's of top end power need a "shorter" gear. When we say an engine has lots of torque, we are saying that it has lots of low end power. Modern engines use all kinds of tricks such as variable valve timing and variable inlet tract lengths to try to flatten the torque curve as much as possible, but an absolutely flat torque curve has yet to be achieve, although the "torque bandwidwith" of modern engines is much better than our vintage engines.
BTW, we refer to the top gear in the transmission as "high" eventhough it's lower numerically than the other gears. This is because it provides a higher speed at the same revs. Rather than talk about "high" or "low numerical", how about if we standardize on "short" for a high numerical ratio and "tall" for a low numerical ratio.
Duke
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