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Old 03-09-2007, 10:06 PM
BradG BradG is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 20
Location: Texas
not exactly true

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob View Post
Yeah that was pretty bad on my part I'm sorry it was early and I was up until 5 last night on cruise boat so I'm pretty out of it... my bad.

anyways, torque is the force that is applied at a certain distance (radius) of rotation, so its a much greater factor in acceleration than horsepower, but once you pass a certain limit, which is different for every car/tire setup/driving conditions, the amount of force at the wheels is more than the maximum force of friction with the road, and any more torque is useless.
It all depends on how you look at it. Tire size (overall radius) does make a difference in the potential force at the ground (which is really what you're interested in anyway). If you consider this, then it also makes a difference on the effective "resistive torque" from the ground. This is important when considering traction limited situations.
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