Big Rotors = less horsepower at the wheels Options

[anthony]

I've been watching Sports Car Revolution on Speed lately. Of course most of the cars they feature are Japanese but I really like that they put everything through a dyno. The balance bling bling and performance mods pretty well.

Anyway, they are doing an Acura RSX project right now. They fitted the car with a big brake kit - you know, big rotors and big calipers. Their times around the track didn't really improve even though they were faster around the corners because they could brake later.

After dyno testing they came to the conclusion that even though the big brake kit was lighter than the stock brakes it resulted in a 7 hp loss at the wheels because of the increased rotating weight of the big rotors.

I thought it was a pretty interesting result.

[Dave_Darling]

Actually, this type of dyno is meant to cost one heck of a lot less to buy and operate than the "fixed load" type. And it's much better at doing before/after type measurements (before and after a modification) than giving absolute numbers. But then again, with all the correction factors that have to be added to most dyno runs, you very rarely get comparable numbers to other dyno runs on other machines on other dates anyway...

--DD