Nolan Penney wrote:
> Again, performance does not merely exist at wide open throttle.
*Measured* performance is only meaningful at wide open
throttle.
If your car isn't fast enough at half throttle, why would
you go through the hassle of a carb swap? Just push your
foot down a little farther. Voila, faster!
It's like collecting the best Olympic runners of all
time for a 100 meter showdown, then instead of letting them
run the 100 meters, have them walk it casually and measure
their times.
Sure, some of them might be faster than others, but
is it meaningful?
No.
A variable throttle is important for
the driveability of a car, you need to be able to
cruise smoothly.
However, it's pretty logical that half throttle should
very roughly be half engine power, or at least somewhere
in the ballpark.
If on one carb set half throttle is 50% power and on
a second set half throttle is 80% power, it doesn't make
the second set faster, it just means the linkage isn't
set up very well.
Again, car manufacturers do this all the time to make
cars seem faster on test drives. You tap the throttle
and think "wow!" but when you get out on the road and
put it to the metal, there isn't much more hiding.
Strangely, my father's old Reliant K-car was like
this. He had a trailer for it so I used to borrow it
occasionally. The first few stop signs I would forget
and and accelerate loudly and jerkily away just by
touching the pedal, about 80% of the power was in
the first 20% of pedal travel!
(the remaining 80% of pedal travel just made more
noise)
--
Trevor Boicey, P. Eng.
Ottawa, Canada, tboicey@brit.ca
ICQ #17432933 http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/
"That was the old me, which was, ironically, the young me."
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