Is More Flow Better, Is The Smallest Intake Port That Flows The Most The Best
The vector of a torque is meaningless in this context, it's always parallel to the crank. Torque is a couple which is used as a motive force. It's force at a distance, without velocity or rpm it doesn't do us any good.
Torque is meaningless though because it doesn't tell us anything other than whether something can overcome a static resistance. Without rpm, there's no power and power is what it takes to accelerate.
No one calls a high revving engine a "torque" build. The entire point is that an increase of torque is an increase in power, but there's a practical limit to max torque. Making max torque at 2k rpm won't win any races or even be "fun" to drive. Max rpm is a function of good engineering, and increasing the rpm capability does not typically lower the torque produced, and so a higher revving engine always wins the drag race.
Whether that higher revving engine is good on the street is a moot point. Different people tolerate different levels of racy on the street, and what's streetable is too subjective to define. Not everyone wants to thump around smoking the tires and losing races, but I get that some people do.
The vector of torque can hardly be "meaningless" when that's exactly what torque is – a rotational force (that acts at 90 degrees to the centre, just like the opposite of centrifugal force).
I also fail to see how it is "meaningless" when every single Power equation is based on it. And you're not going anywhere until you overcome that static resistance! Not just once, but over and over again as you try to increase the velocity of the car (ie; accelerate).
I have used the example of electric engines (yes, even though we are talking about combustion engines for the most part) because they are a prime example of what an almost perfectly flat toque curve can do.
We have one particular person here claiming that you can have all the torque in the world, but if you put the car in top gear and let her rip, nothing will happen. That is blatantly wrong and shows a very narrow mindset that can't come to grips with the fact that any amount of torque can overcome any amount of static resistance and that gearing has NOTHING to do with it.
Gearing simply multiplies what you already have. Or not. In the case of a peaky race (combustion) engine, you don't have much torque low down, so you have to multiply it at lower rpm to overcome static resistance (and then rolling resistance) just to get the engine to a point at which it makes MORE TORQUE.
Answer me this,
@Phreakish, what accelerates faster: Higher peak horsepower, or higher average torque under the curve?
A 500HP electric engine can beat a 550hp petrol engine every day of the week if it has more toque under the curve (which it almost always will) and it doesn't even need a gearbox todo it(!), because you guys seem to have forgotten one thing:
A= M/F
This static equation, when applied dynamically, refers to EVERY SINGLE ROTATION that torque is being applied to. It is not just at 8000RPM or whatever. It is at 1000rpm, 2000rpm, 3000rpm, 4000rpm etc and every thing in-between.
Average torque under the curve beats peak power.
Not everyone wants to thump around smoking the tires and losing races, but I get that some people do.
It's called bracket racing, mate. And I don't lose too many. I might not race as often as some, but my car holds its own and I have just as much fun as you doing it.