uh... sorry no increase in horsepower. Your power output didn't change.. you only changed your hp/weight ratio ever so slightly.
Your original ratio was 170/3000 or .0567 hp/lb
your new ratio is 170/2930 or .0580
for a difference of .0013 hp/lb which then means an increase of your ratio of 2.29%
Which anyway doesn't mean anything real important if you are worried about getting going faster because horsepower is 550 ft-lb/s which is a rate at which ft-lb can be applied. Meaning your mass affects your acceleration, which is torque dependent:
If you go back F=m*a or lbf = lbf/32.2ft/s^2 * ft/s^2 you will see that the units in the system cancel out. Therefore FORCE which is units of lbf relative to your mass is what generates your acceleration. So you get your applied force by compesating for rim radius (your lever arm) and using your vehicle mass... which then gives you your acceleration rate.
Now that's all fine and dandy but then you need to be able to have the horsepower available to balance out forces in a system... So in other words if the vehicle is seeing 50 lbf of resistance over 1 ft for 1 second you'll need 50/550 hp to achieve that feet. But to accelerate at a given rate you need to have the torque necessary to accelerate the mass/overcome a resistance force. Horsepower put simply is what is necessary to overcome a certain amount of force over a certain distance in a certain amount of time. lbf-ft/s
Hope that helps! I apologize in advance if I made any mathematical/reasoning errors, but I believe I should have it spelled out ok.. but feel free to correct!.
jersey_emt said:
LOL...I cleaned out my trunk and took out about 70 pounds of junk and put it in my basement.
Car weighs ~3000 pounds with me, and the 'necessary' junk in it
70 lbs / 3000 lbs = 0.02333 = 2.3333% weight loss = 2.3333% more HP
170 HP * 0.02333 = 3.966HP
Woohoo! 4 HP gain for free!
